President Kurt Waldheim of Austria has been forced to call off his planned state visits to Senegal and the Ivory Coast this month.
Both West African countries diplomatically withdrew their invitations when presented with documentary evidence of Waldheim’s Nazi past by the World Jewish Congress.
He was to have arrived in Senegal for a three-day visit Oct. 16, to be followed by a five day visit to Ivory Coast.
But the Senegal trip was canceled after a telephone talk with President Abdou Diouf, Waldheim’s office in Vienna said.
President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast reportedly informed Waldheim last Friday that his visit would be inopportune because a government reshuffle was imminent.
According to the WJC, which exposed Waldheim’s Nazi activities when he ran for president of Austria in 1986, its representatives in various capitals presented the ambassadors of the two African nations with documentation of Waldheim’s wartime activities.
They reminded the envoys that Waldheim has been shunned by most national leaders.
Probably the most telling document was the decision in April 1987 by the U.S. Justice Department to bar Waldheim from entering the United States, because he was implicated in the deportation of civilians to death camps and the execution of hostages, the WJC said.
Since taking office, Waldheim has been rebuffed repeatedly in his efforts to be received by other heads of state.
He has been invited by no Western or Eastern bloc country. His junkets abroad have been confined to several Moslem countries and to the Vatican, where, as a Catholic, he was received by Pope John Paul II.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
