World Notes Austria

When Kurt Waldheim was inaugurated last week as Austria's sixth President since 1945, the protests were few and symbolic. In the sunlit Great Hall of the Parliament building, some two dozen Socialist Members of Parliament wore black neckties. Many Socialists believe that Waldheim, who served in a German army command responsible for the deportation of Greek Jews to death camps during World War II, is unfit to be President.

Absent from the ceremony were the Israeli, Yugoslav and U.S. ambassadors. Israel withdrew its ambassador when Waldheim was elected. U.S. Ambassador Ronald Lauder was attending his mother's birthday party in Paris.

During his inaugural speech Waldheim decried the "horror of the Holocaust," but such regrets could not silence groups of American and Austrian protesters.