Austrian President Kurt Waldheim is being urged to raise the case of Nazi war criminal Alois Brunner with Syrian officials during his upcoming visit to Damascus.
In Washington, meanwhile, six members of Congress have warned Turkish authorities that Waldheim’s scheduled visit to Ankara could harm U.S.-Turkish relations.
Waldheim was to depart Thursday for Syria and Kuwait. On Nov. 2, he is scheduled to stop off in Turkey, which would be the first NATO nation to receive him since he became president.
The U.S. warning was sent in a telegram to Turkish President Kenan Evren and Prime Minister Turgut Ozal from six members of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East.
The telegram, initiated by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), urged the Turkish leaders to cancel the meeting with Waldheim. “As members of Congress who value Turkish-U.S. relations, we are appalled and shocked at the news that Kurt Waldheim will be received by you early in November,” the lawmakers said.
Joining Lantos, who is a Holocaust survivor, in signing the telegram were Reps. Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.), Lawrence Smith (D-Fla.), Mel Levine (D-Calif.), Edward Feighan (D-Ohio) and Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.).
In Vienna, Freda Meissner-Blau, leader of the Green party faction in the Austrian Parliament, has demanded that Waldheim urge the Syrians to extradite Brunner.
ASKED TO URGE NAZI’S EXTRADITION
Brunner, one of the last major Nazi war criminals still at large, was a close associate of Adolf Eichmann in administering the Final Solution. He lives in Damascus.
She said it would be most appropriate since this year is the 50th anniversary of the Anschluss, the merging of Austria into the Third Reich.
There was no immediate response from the President’s Office.
Waldheim himself has been implicated in Nazi atrocities perpetrated by the German army unit in which he served during World War II.
Since taking office in 1986, the one-time secretary-general of the United Nations has been the most isolated of presidents.
He is officially barred by the U.S. Justice Department from coming to the United States. He has not been invited to visit any European country, East or West.
Apart from an audience granted him in Rome by Pope John Paul II in 1987, Waldheim’s ventures abroad have been confined to the Arab and Moslem worlds. He has visited Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
If Waldheim were to press the Syrian authorities to extradite Brunner, he would be acting against an Austrian Nazi who operated in the same territory as he did during his army service.
It was Brunner who organized the deportations of 40,000 Jews from Salonika, Greece, almost all of whom perished in the gas chambers.
Waldheim has insisted he had no knowledge of the deportations or of the outrages committed against civilians and partisans in Yugoslavia.
(JTA correspondent David Friedman in Washington contributed to this report.)
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.
