Former Un Chief With Nazi Past Dies at 88

Kurt Waldheim, the former UN secretary general whose election as Austrian president in the 80s triggered an international outcry after his Nazi military service was revealed, died yesterday at the age of 88.

Mr Waldheim's legacy will forever be tainted by the disclosure that he belonged to a German army unit that committed atrocities in the Balkans during the second world war.

The revelations - and his subsequent election as president - led to a huge loss of prestige for Austria.

Mr Waldheim was placed on a US government watchlist of undesirable aliens, and in Austria he was often referred to as the "lonely man in the palace" because he rarely traveled and many leaders shunned him.

But he later claimed that the scandal around his 1986-92 presidency was useful because it helped Austrians to admit that many of them had not been passive victims of Nazi Germany.

Mr Waldheim, a career diplomat, consistently denied being involved in any Nazi crimes.

Although his name was discovered on a list of German officers who took part in an operation in the Balkans in which an estimated 68,000 people were killed, an international commission of historians found no evidence that he had committed war crimes.

But it condemned his failure to prevent or oppose the atrocities he knew were being committed.

Mr Waldheim's family said he had died of heart failure after a "short but severe" illness.