Austria pays farewell to controversial former president (Roundup)

Jun 23, 2007, 13:51 GMT

Vienna - Former Austrian President and UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim was laid to rest on Saturday in Vienna, with a large number of Austrians paying last respects to their controversial former head of state.

Waldheim, who was at the centre of controversy in the 1980s over revelations about a Nazi past which he had kept secret, did not receive a formal full state funeral since he was not the current serving president. Also, according to his last wishes the ceremony was to be kept very simple.

Under slightly adapted funeral protocol, heads of state were therefore not formally invited. The ceremony was attended members of the Austrian government and dignitaries from neighbouring Liechtenstein and South Tyrol.

Proceedings started with a requiem mass at Vienna's St. Stephens cathedral, followed by two commemorative ceremonies, one with members of the Austrian government and a second at Vienna's UN offices attended by Vienna UN head Antonio Maria Costa.

Waldheim's successor in office, Austrian President Heinz Fischer, called for reconciliation and urged people to look at Waldheim's lifetime achievements 'as a whole.'

The politician who involuntarily brought about Austria's reassessment of its role in the Third Reich was laid to rest in the presidents' vault on Vienna's central cemetery on Saturday afternoon.

Waldheim had been internationally isolated due to his refusal to discuss his Nazi past. He always rejected claims of his involvement in war crimes, committed while his unit was stationed in the Balkans and Greece during World War Two.

In a letter published after his death on July 14, Waldheim said he 'deeply regretted' that he 'took position on Nazi crimes fully and clearly much too late.'

The accusations against him had nothing in common with his thinking, he wrote, saying that his silence had nothing to do with his beliefs, but with his outrage over the extent of the accusations.