Turmoil over Haider U-turn

THROWING Austrian politics into fresh turmoil, far-rightist Joerg Haider has announced he will stay on as a provincial governor and Freedom Party member, hours after vowing to resign when the party was thrashed in weekend elections.

The flamboyant Mr Haider, whose praise of Adolf Hitler and anti-foreigner rhetoric helped fuel the meteoric rise of his party into government two years ago, said political colleagues had persuaded him not to quit the movement or his job as governor of the southwestern province of Carinthia.

"I accept personally much of the responsibility for the bad results," Mr Haider 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 backing off on his latest threat to leave politics, saying it showed he cannot be taken seriously. The reversal was also likely to further alienate swing voters who abandoned his party in Sunday's general elections.

Mr Haider should quit once and for all in the name of "political decency", Franz Fischler, an Austrian who serves as the European Union's agriculture commissioner, told Austrian radio.

Senior Social Democrat Doris Bures mocked Mr Haider for his "ridiculous attempt" to re-impose his will on his tattered party, suggesting his earlier announcement that he would resign was never meant seriously.

"He tried to turn things around one more time with his empty threats," she said.

As late as Monday night, as he headed into a six-hour meeting with senior Freedom Party leaders, Mr Haider had repeated his intention to quit as governor the main post he now holds.

Mr Haider's flashes of pro-Nazi sentiment and flamboyant exposés of corruption in other parties brought his Freedom Party from obscurity in the mid 1980s to unprecedented strength it joined the present government coalition after coming in second in 1999 elections. But the same confrontational streak that attracted voters to Mr Haider proved his party's undoing in Sunday's general election. Weakened by months of infighting provoked by Mr Haider, the party lost nearly two-thirds of its previous support to capture only 10% of the vote.