Haider Backs Off on Threat to Quit Politics

Austria's far right leader, Jörg Haider, today once again reneged on a promise to resign from politics that he made hours after his party's poor showing in last Sunday's general election.

Yesterday Mr Haider declared himself fed up with politics after his Freedom Party took only 10% of the vote, and he offered his political head as compensation. But today he said his friends had convinced him to stay on as governor of Carinthia province for the Freedom Party.

"I accept personally much of the responsibility for the bad results," he said. "A resignation would have been the logical consequence. But my party friends did not accept this because they believe my 'Carinthian way' is good and I should continue."

Critics ridiculed Mr Haider for backtracking on his latest threat to leave politics, saying it showed he could not be taken seriously. The reversal is also likely to further alienate swing voters who abandoned his party in the weekend poll.

Austria's European Union agriculture commissioner, Franz Fischler, said that Mr Haider should quit his role once and for all in the name of "political decency".

One senior Social Democrat, Doris Bures, mocked Mr Haider for a "ridiculous attempt" to reimpose his will on his tattered party. "He tried to turn things around one more time with his empty threats," she said.

Georg Wurmitzer, head of the conservative People's Party in Carinthia province, said Mr Haider's antics were nothing more than an attempt "to bring his team down to their knees."

Earlier threats by Mr Haider to withdraw from public life were apparently intended to pressurise opponents in his party. But his recent announcement had been treated more seriously because of three much-criticised trips to Iraq in little over a year, widespread rejection of his attacks on rivals, and other antics that provoked public outrage.

As late as last night, Mr Haider had been repeating his intention to quit as governor - the main post he now holds. But even then, the party leader Herbert Haupt predicted that he would remain in both the post and the party.

Mr Haider's flashes of pro-Nazi sentiment and flamboyant attacks on corruption in other parties brought his Freedom Party from obscurity in the mid 1980s to unprecedented strength. It joined a government coalition after coming second in elections in1999.

But the same confrontational streak that attracted voters to Haider proved his party's undoing on Sunday. Weakened by months of infighting, the party lost nearly two-thirds of its previous voter support.

Disaffected swing voters powered the conservative People's Party - the Freedom Party's government coalition partner - to more than 42%, its best showing since the mid-1960s. The Social Democrats also gained, receiving just under 37 % of the vote.

Former supporters attributed some of Mr Haider's problems - such as attacks on Freedom Party moderates that alienated the electorate - to his growing suspicions of those around him.

"He would start crying in the middle of a meeting," said Peter Sichrovsky, a former Freedom Party general-secretary and the party's only prominent Jew, who broke with Mr Haider in September when his supporters purged moderates.

"He would yell, 'You have betrayed me, you are destroying me,"' Mr Sichrovsky told AP. When Mr Haider's party - often seen as a refuge for those with neo-Nazi sympathies - came to power in 1999 after gaining nearly 27% of the popular vote, the EU imposed seven months of diplomatic sanctions on Austria. Israel withdrew its ambassador and has still not replaced him.