AUSTRIA: Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider, whose party is a partner in the coalition government, said yesterday he was forming a new group free of the internal critics who have dogged his Freedom Party's electoral fortunes.
Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel said he had no problem still working with Mr Haider but declined to rule out the possibility of early elections.
Mr Haider and Freedom Party leaders would remain in government but in a new organisation - the Alliance for the Future of Austria - without the critics blamed for a series of defeats.
Rebels had argued the Freedom Party should return to opposition to promote its views.
"We have agreed that I will be the leader of this new movement," Mr Haider told a news conference in Vienna attended by Freedom Party leaders due to join the new organisation.
It would take Freedom's place as partner in the centre-right coalition with Mr Schüssel's larger conservative People's Party, rather than pull out and prompt early elections.
Party infighting was undermining the work of its ministers in government, Mr Haider said.
Mr Schüssel was quoted by the Austrian Press Agency as saying Mr Haider was a "constructive personality", though he cautiously raised the possibility of early elections.
Ursula Haubner, Mr Haider's sister and outgoing chairwoman of the Freedom Party, said: "This [ decision] is the result of the destructive forces in the Freedom Party." Mrs Haubner said she was stepping down as the party's head but would remain social affairs minister.
Leader of the Freedom Party's parliamentary faction Herbert Scheibner said: "The government majority in parliament is secure," adding he was confident the party's deputies would switch their allegiance to the new organisation.
Mr Haider built up the Freedom Party to a peak of 27 per cent in Austrian elections in 1999, the largest showing by a far-right party in Europe since the second World War.
But support has fallen steadily and it took just 10 per cent in parliamentary elections in November 2002.
Mr Haider stepped down as Freedom Party chairman in 2000 but has remained a dominant figure. He drew international criticism after praising Nazi employment policies and Hitler's Waffen SS - comments for which he later apologised.
The switch to a new party comes after a purge last week of a prominent internal critic by Mr Haider's allies, which failed to quash support among some party functionaries for a pro-opposition stance.
"We do not want to use up all of our energy on our internal critics, we want to use it for Austria," Mr Haider said. - (Reuters)