AUSTRIA:Former UN general secretary Kurt Waldheim has died in Vienna aged 88, two decades after he became Austrian president under a cloud of allegations about his Nazi past.
A career diplomat, Mr Waldheim was accused during his 1986 presidential election campaign of involvement in the wartime deportation of 40,000 Greek Jews to death camps.
His denials, first of any knowledge, then of involvement, put Austria into diplomatic isolation and Mr Waldheim on the US "watch list", forbidding him from entering the US.
President Heinz Fischer praised Mr Waldheim yesterday as a "great Austrian" and said his predecessor's wartime record had to be seen in the context of a "difficult phase of Austria's past".
Former chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel said Mr Waldheim had been "unfairly associated with war criminals".
Mr Waldheim was born in 1918 into a middle-class Catholic family in politically turbulent times. He served as a translator during the second World War in the Balkans, where he witnessed Nazi atrocities.
He became a star diplomat after the war, serving as ambassador to the United Nations, then foreign minister in 1968. Three years later he returned to New York to serve as UN secretary general for two terms until 1981.
The "Waldheim affair" broke in March 1986 with the discovery of his military registry card linking him to the Nazi stormtroopers.
A dossier produced by the World Jewish Congress (WJC) indicated that Waldheim was involved in the brutal suppression of Greek partisans and the deportation of 40,000 Jews to death camps.
The Austrian president continued to deny any personal guilt and received support from important quarters, notably Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. The international consternation reached its peak when WJC head Israel Singer asked: "Should a former Nazi and liar become a representative of Austria?"
That remark tipped the sympathy scale at home back towards Mr Waldheim and he won the election with 54 per cent of the vote.
A government commission later cleared him, but noted that he probably knew more about the era than he was saying and that he had "direct proximity to criminal actions".