I lead. I lead. I lead the people - By Dominic Lawson JORG HAIDER is famous in Austria for, among other things, keeping people waiting. When the people concerned are his idolising supporters gathered together in a mass rally, this technique apparently helps add to the build up and the tension before the great man speaks. In my case, as an audience of one - chosen by Mr Haider to receive his first non-domestic interview since his Freedom Party had entered government in Austria, precipitating unprecedented diplomatic sanctions by the EU - the delay beyond the appointed time of 12 o'clock last Friday, was a mere 40 minutes. But when I showed some slight signs of the required tension his charming press officer assured me that this was not deliberate: Mr Haider was on a very important call to "the Commission". Perhaps, finally, the European Commission was deigning to be on speaking terms with the leader of a party that had won the right to a share in the government of one of its outlying national regions? Or perhaps it was just the head of the Carinthian Lottery Commission on the phone. We were, after all, in Klagenfurt, the capital of Haider's powerbase in Carinthia, the Alpine electoral region of which he is governor, and which he has pledged to continue to govern, rather than take up office in the new national administration. This is very cunning, say his opponents. The Freedom Party cabinet members will do exactly as he says; if all goes well, he can take the credit. If the new government falls apart, he can still campaign as the untainted outsider who will clean up the mess in Vienna. In Vienna, Mr Haider can now move around only surrounded by the greatest protection. But here in Klagenfurt, everything is very relaxed. There are no leather-jacketed bodyguards in evidence, no squawking walkie-talkies. We walk into his modest office - the furniture is not much above self-assembly level - without any security checks or searches. Mr Haider has become known for his casual, colourful style of dress, perhaps as part of his calculated appeal to the younger Austrian voter. On this occasion he was wearing a black suit and black tie. But his appearance was still astonishingly youthful for a man who has just turned 50. One would guess his age at 10 years less than that. His face is pixie-like, or, if one was being cruel, that of a gamin satyr. And he cannot be more than 5ft 9in tall in his heels. His voice is a clear, firm tenor. His English is fairly good, and, since my German is almost non-existent, slightly fractured English would be the language of the interviewee. We sat down next to each other at a plain table devoid of decoration or drink. "So?" he said. "So," I replied, "how does it feel to be the most hated man in Europe?" "I am not sure if I am the most hated man in Europe, because the people outside the journalists and the political class support me in an increasing way, and if I see the reaction by the people, the daily telephone calls, the letters we receive, I think we are in a good way." "What is your view of the action taken by the EU states, to cut off all bilateral political talks with Austria?" "The EU is acting illegally, because we signed a contract with the other 14 European states when we joined the EU [in 1995] and the essence of this contract is that, in substantial questions, there must be unanimity. In this case Austria was not even consulted, we had no representation, there was not even the possibility to exchange our different views. There was only some miracle decision on the part of the EU, and nobody can follow it because it was totally against the contract." "And how is this affecting your party's support in Austria?" "I believe it is increasing, because the people feel uncomfortable and disappointed with the European Union. Therefore I cannot imagine that this decision was taken by the EU with any strategic thinking, because it is helping exactly the political group - us - which it is meant to attack." "But does it disappoint you that, for example, the Prince of Wales has now cancelled his planned visit to Austria in May?" Mr Haider snorted derisively. "The Austrian people would have been disappointed if Diana had been coming, and then cancelled. But this" - he paused - "is not the case." Jokes in bad taste aside, it seemed to me that what Mr Haider was describing had echoes of the situation when Kurt Waldheim, while president of Austria, was revealed to have been personally implicated in the deportation of Jews to concentration camps during the Second World War. The more the outside world put pressure on Austria to remove him from office, the more popular Waldheim became with his own people. But when I put this comparison to Mr Haider, he instantly drew a sharp distinction: "It is hard to make a comparison between my case and that of Mr Waldheim because Mr Waldheim was a former soldier in the German army and I was born after the end of the war and am the leader of a democratic movement. No, the point is that the political establishment is a little bit afraid in Europe, because here is a politician and a political party which does not belong to their political establishment. It comes up from the people." "That's not precisely why the EU is attacking you, is it?" "Oh, sure, because we don't belong to the political establishment and they are afraid that such movements as ours could happen in their countries, too." This is, of course, a real possibility, as mooted by Euro-sceptics in this country: that the insatiable drive from Brussels towards political union could generate a range of nationalistic protest parties across the Continent. So I asked Mr Haider whether he aspired to ally with such protest parties - for example, Jean-Marie Le Pen's in France - across Europe. His reply should perhaps smooth some ruffled feathers in Brussels. "No. We do not like this idea. You can understand the Freedom Party only with respect to the Austrian political system. There is no other country in Europe where two governing parties [the People's Party and the Social Democrats] ruled for 50 years, dividing all power between them. They influenced the daily lives of the people, forced the people to join their parties if they wanted to be a civil servant, or even a doctor, or a teacher. This is a system of reduced freedom, and we are trying to bring freedom back to the people. There is no example that can be compared with Austria. We are a specific product of the Austrian political system, and we do not want to be compared with other movements." But, I asked, if this was such a local Austrian matter, why is everyone in Europe getting so steamed up; why, for example, was Austria being boycotted by the Prince of Wales? Mr Haider smiled. "I don't know. Perhaps he reads all the stupid stories in the British newspapers. Because nobody outside knows us exactly." (Here one should step in to defend the heir to the throne against the severe charge of believing what he reads in the British press. He was simply doing what Robin "ethical foreign policy" Cook was telling him to do.) For all his clear irritation with the British Government and its royal diplomatic chesspiece, Mr Haider has occasionally expressed his admiration for Tony Blair. Why? I asked him. What is the affinity he claims with the leader of the Labour Party? "Well, if you compare our programme with the programme of Blair, you will find a lot of similarities . . . He is protecting England against criminals, the same thing we want to do. He wants to have lifelong observation of criminals who hurt children, these are similar to our proposals, as well as the programme to provide jobs for the young generation, to reduce youth unemployment. Just as we do here in Carinthia." I wasn't quite sure if Mr Haider was saying that he is a Blairite or that Blair is a Haiderite, but I took up the challenge, pointing out that, under Mr Blair, Britain continued to refuse to sign the Schengen open borders accord, which, as Mr Haider has protested in Austria's case, has increased immigration from the East, and that the Labour Government now ostracising Mr Haider has mooted the idea that people entering the United Kingdom from the Indian subcontinent might have to pay a deposit of £10,000, to be forfeited if they fail to leave. "Yes, I think this patriotic aspect of Blair's policy is interesting, because it shows that first one has to protect one's own country, and only then be responsible for the wider Europe. This is a good programme." I said I was surprised that Mr Haider did not prefer to align himself with William Hague and the Conservative Party, whose policies are much more Euro-sceptic. After all, Mr Haider had campaigned against Austrian membership of the EU, and fulminated against the Maastricht Treaty. "No. First of all I think that Mr Blair is a nephew of Margaret Thatcher in some way and not a socialist. And British Conservatives are to a certain extent anti-European. We in the Freedom Party are not anti-European." Mr Haider observed my look of incredulity. "No . . . the Freedom Party has made some remarks about the negotiations between Austria and the EU, that's all. We pay too much money to the EU and we want to reduce it." In recent days the financial markets have speculated about the possibility of Austria leaving the EU, under Mr Haider's influence. I reminded him that he had campaigned for a "No" vote when Austria made its decision to enter. Would he, if he ever became chancellor, take Austria out? "We have to respect the decision of the people. The people decided to enter the EU. We must accept it. It was done by referendum, by a majority of two thirds." "But that support can change. According to you, the EU is now unpopular in Austria because of the way it has behaved." "Yes, but there is no way out of the contract with Europe. There is no loophole in the treaty." One of Mr Haider's stated concerns about the European Union centres on enlargement, the process through which the states formerly known as Eastern Europe gain accession. He constantly points out that, within the existing EU, Austria has the longest border with the aspirant eastern nations, and therefore the greatest vulnerability to cheap labour. During the recent Austrian election campaign his party kept using the term "Überfremdung" - literally "overforeign-ness" - precisely the term that Goebbels coined in different circumstances during Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s. Would Mr Haider explain to a British audience what he meant by "Überfremdung?" At first he seemed, in reply, to want to distance himself slightly from this very successful part of the Freedom Party's electoral appeal. "Now in the recent election it was used only in Vienna, because they" - which I took to mean, oddly, his own party - "they made their own campaign in Vienna city, and they meant that we have too many immigrants in Austria, because in Vienna for instance we have about 15 to 18 per cent foreigners, the highest percentage of all European cities. And in Austria as a whole we have about seven million inhabitants and among them nearly one million are foreigners, not EU citizens - foreigners. That's a high percentage." So is Mr Haider proposing voluntary repatriation, as he has sometimes been taken to mean? He chose not to answer this question directly. "We tried to integrate, as it is called, to integrate people from abroad, but they must want to integrate into Austrian society." I said that I had always understood Austria to have been a wide mix of nationalities, from the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and that Austrian nationalism was a rather absurd idea. Indeed Mr Haider himself, in his youthful enthusiasm for PanGermanism, had described Austria as "an ideological miscarriage". "Well, there is no such thing as Austrian nationalism. There is Austrian patriotism. That means we are proud of our country and we are proud of our history." I reminded Mr Haider that, in his "Vienna Declaration" of 1992, he had pronounced, to his party and to his nation: "Whoever goes with me stands for an Austrian Freedom Party which is committed to the German ethnic and cultural community." Was this not an attempt, after the reunification of Germany, to revive the idea of Anschluss? "No. All I meant is that we have an exchange of ethnic and cultural activities, German books, German actors over here, it's just a vivid cultural exchange, designed by language primarily." So that's all right then. Or is it? Because the real reason for Mr Haider's controversiality is his - not to put too fine a point on it - deeply ambiguous attitude towards the virtues of the former Anschluss, the period when Germany and Austria were one, and did terrible things together. I told Mr Haider that I wanted to address his attitude to this period of history ."Sure." I pointed out that, on the day before the 1995 Austrian election, German television had broadcast an amateur video of him addressing local war veterans, including former members of the Waffen SS, in the Carinthian town of Krumpendorf. These people had congregated every year in the spa town for a reunion. Addressing the 1995 meeting as "dear friends", Mr Haider told them: "You fought and risked your lives . . . so that the younger generation should have a future in which order, justice and decency are still principles." He went on to say that "anyone who says that the members of the war generation, the Wehrmacht, were all criminals are in the end besmirching their own parents, their own family and their fathers . . . because we want to have a future, we will have to teach the Lefties of political correctness that we are not to be done away with . . . we are intellectually superior to the others and that is something very vital". When I quoted back to Mr Haider his taped words at this meeting - part of an event called the Kameradschaft - he immediately replied: "This was not an audience with the Waffen SS, it was a meeting where many different people take part. I addressed them to say that the elder generation played an important role because they re-established democracy in Europe after the war. That's what I meant." "But you said that they fought and risked their lives. That was during the war, not after." "Yes, this was a meeting of veterans." "I understand that, Mr Haider." "But these were veterans of all sorts. That means you have Italian veterans, American veterans, French veterans, German veterans, Hungarian veterans, Russian veterans." I am told that the vast majority of attendees at the Kameradschaft reunions are Germans and Austrians, but rather than quibble over that point, I asked Mr Haider: "So were the Austrian and German veterans all fighting for order, justice and decency?" "It was not a meeting for them exclusively. As I told you, it was a mixed audience." "Yes, I understand that, but were the German and Austrian veterans fighting for order, justice and decency?" Mr Haider seemed hesitant for the first time in the interview. "I think that all the members of the elder generation had their idealistic views on both sides. They did not know what was really going on." "So you are saying that both sides of the last war were both fighting for decency and justice?" "Yes, that's correct. Both sides of the war." So that was that one sorted. The next incident I brought up was the occasion in 1991, when Mr Haider declared in a debate in the Carinthian provincial diet: "In the Third Reich they had a sound employment policy." Uproar ensued, as a result of which Mr Haider was forced to resign the governorship of Carinthia. I asked him, whether, when he made such remarks, he was simply committing the social solecism of saying in public what many Austrians think or say in private. "No, it was my responsibility to have expressed something which could be misunderstood. And therefore I apologised in a ceremony at the time, and I apologised to all those who were hurt by this statement. And it is not my belief that, just because there is now a clear distance from this dark period in Austria, you can pick out one element of that period, and say: this is positive. Because the Holocaust was such a terrible thing." I said that none the less there must be a strand among Austrians that does still think: at least the Nazis brought full employment. Mr Haider thought for a second. "Well, so it is written in a number of books." Several people have tried to understand Mr Haider's attitude to Austria's past with reference to his parents. They both were very early members of the Nazi party, when it was actually illegal in Austria. So they fled to Germany and took up citizenship there, both rising to become full-time officials in the party. His fellow Austrian, Simon Wiesenthal, while insisting that "Haider never said anything against Israel and has never said anything anti-Semitic" also said of him: "His parents were out-and-out Nazis. Haider was educated by them. Much of what he says that is so uncontrolled he heard as a child at home. His party is a Führer party and he is a dictator in democratic guise." So, I asked Mr Haider, were his more unfortunate remarks, in earlier years, somehow connected with his obvious respect for his parents? "I have a good relation to my parents and I love my parents, and it's clear that I try to accept their position, but you have to distinguish this situation from my personal opinion. It may be that when I was a young boy there was no substantial discussion about what happened in the past." But, I reminded Mr Haider, after the war his parents were punished for their affiliations, forced to take up menial work: his father as a gravedigger, his mother as a cleaner. Surely this would have been discussed. Didn't he have any bitter memories associated with this? "I had a happy childhood. It was a beautiful time. We were not rich. We were more or less a poor family, but I didn't want for anything." "So there were no feelings of anger or bitterness?" "No. It was a beautiful childhood." "But surely your parents at least were angry at what happened?" "I am not sure. I think after the war it was nearly the finish of all the things they believed in, and it was hard to start a new beginning, but - and I think this is the real success of their generation - they found their way back to democracy." "Your father joined the Freedom Party before you, didn't he?" "Yes." "Did he encourage you to join?" "No. That was my decision." "If you were of your father's generation, would you have done as he did, and joined the Nazi party?" Mr Haider paused a little. "It's not easy to say . . . because with the privilege of hindsight you know exactly what you have to do." He thought a bit more, and then grinned. "I think I would have been in prison during the Nazi period, because I am a fighter for freedom and not for dictatorship." "So you and your father would have been on different sides?" "Yes, because I can not accept any way but democracy." My final question from the past concerned Mr Haider's still-controversial ownership of the Bärental - Bear Valley - a 3,500-acre Carinthian forested estate, essentially a highly profitable timber business, left to him by a great-uncle. As has been widely reported in the British press, it appears that the great-uncle bought the estate, now valued at more than £10 million, for almost nothing from Italian Jews who were desperate to leave Nazi Austria. It is also now reported that the descendants of the former Jewish owners, who fled to Palestine, may sue for the return of their old estate. What was the truth about the transaction? I asked Mr Haider. "It was a deal between two Italian people in the middle of the 1930s. The former owner was a Jewish family from Pisa, and the father of my uncle was living in Italy as an Italian merchant, and he bought this valley. After the end of the war, the family who sold it tried to get the estate back, and my great-uncle paid a certain amount more voluntarily, and they made a written agreement accepted by the courts." "But isn't it accepted that your great-uncle acquired the estate for a tiny fraction of its true value?" "I have not gone through the papers. It was negotiated before a court, and both sides agreed with the result, and my great-uncle gave it to me in 1986." This was the year that Mr Haider became leader of the Freedom Party, strengthened in his political will by his sudden acquisition of complete financial independence and security. But why had he been left the estate by his great-uncle? "He was not married, he had no children, and during my boyhood I spent summer holidays in this house, and therefore I think he decided to give it to me." "Was he a political supporter of yours?" Mr Haider answered a question I had not yet asked. "No. No. Not at all. It's not the basis of the Freedom Party. I have heard that the income of the Freedom Party is my Bear Valley. That's ridiculous. It's a private thing. In Austria all the parties are state-financed. There is no need for private money." Still, Mr Haider's wealth and ambition will surely lead him further. Some years ago, I reminded him, he had declared that he would be Chancellor of Austria by the time he was 50. "Maybe I did." "But you are now 50 and not yet Chancellor. When will you keep your promise to yourself?" "I am not sure if I want to keep this promise, because I am satisfied with my job as Governor of Carinthia." "You have no further ambition?" "I have no further ambition." "You don't want to be Chancellor?" "I don't want to be Chancellor, but if it happens it happens." I rather tactlessly at this point alluded to a former Austrian leader, and wondered if some of the unfortunate comparisons that Mr Haider attracts are in part caused because he is an Austrian populist whose name happens to begin with "H", is two syllables long and ends "er". Mr Haider thought this was very funny. "Yes, perhaps I should be baptised with another surname . . . but look, I can't help these people who produce such a lot of stupid arguments." "Are you personally offended when people say you are a Nazi?" "It hurts me, because I have served 20 years in Austrian politics. Most people in Austria know me well. So I am really hurt by these arguments from people who don't know me, from politicians from outside Austria, who say these things to try to distract attention from their own internal political problems." "You are also accused of being a populist, and opportunist, a political chameleon. How do you answer those charges?" "In a certain way I am a populist, because being a populist means to hear what people think, to be responsive to their wishes and desires." "So do you just follow or do you lead?" For the only time in the interview, Mr Haider seemed quite irritated, and raised his voice. "I lead. I lead. I lead the people. But I try to take their arguments seriously. The problem with the political establishment is that they are distant from the people. They only want to have the people for ruling, not for having a dialogue about their problems, and the solutions they have to give them." "And who are your own political heroes, dead or alive?" "My political heroes? The only one I can accept is the former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt. He was a tough prime minister, and had a good stance on international security questions." Dominic Lawson is the Editor of the Sunday Telegraph Daily Telegraph, 13-2-2000