More On Austria, seems there really is something to the connection:
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Leaked memo reveals how EU courted Haider
By Stephen Castle in Brussels
18 February 2000
Brussels faced new embarrassment over J”rg Haider yesterday when a top official had to defend a report in which he described Austria's far right party leader as "charismatic, even fascinating".
Corrado Pirzio-Biroli, now the senior aide to Austria's European commissioner Franz Fischler, made the reference in a letter written when he was the EU's ambassador to Vienna seven years ago.
The document resurfaced yesterday as Mr Haider made fresh headlines, dashing his coalition partners' hopes that he would keep a low profile in Carinthia where he is governor.
On an unannounced trip to Canada, Mr Haider, who is notorious for his praise of Nazi employment policies and SS veterans, unsuccessfully tried to visit Montreal's Holocaust Centre.
The president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Moshe Ronen, said the museum rejected what he described as a bizarre request. He denounced Mr Haider as a "cynical manipulator of public opinion" who carried the legacy of Hitler "wherever he goes".
Mr Pirzio-Biroli's letter shows the extent to which Brussels tried to court Mr Haider in the run-up to Austria's accession to the EU, which his right-wing Freedom Party then opposed.
But it paints a muddied picture of Mr Haider, arguing that he has "an enormous ego", is "unpredictable" and "follows alternatively the dictates of the right and left lobes of his brain".
Dated February 1993, the confidential report followed a meeting with Mr Haider at which the controversial politician was invited to lunch with the ambassador and given a Euro-Austrian flag pin.
Mr Pirzio-Biroli stressed his common ground with Mr Haider, telling him that he "agreed with his approach of a European entity which, far from being a superstate, would be characterised by maximum decentralisation".
"No doubt, he is charismatic, even fascinating," his letter argues. "In private he is moderate, statesmanlike and articulate. In public he is brilliant, but tends towards hyperbolic populism. This could still carry him further(cont)
etherzone.com
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