Former U.N. Chief Waldheim Dies at 88

During those 10 years, he was known largely as someone who did his best to avoid controversy -- so much so that American diplomats privately considered him uncooperative. At the U.N., he was widely disliked for showing more interest in the trappings of his office than its responsibilities.

His most noticeable moment in the public eye came in 1979, when Muslim militants in Iran seized the U.S. Embassy and took the Americans stationed there hostage. Waldheim led a U.N. delegation to Tehran in an effort to secure their release. But, when he and his retinue were menaced by a mob of angry Iranians, he hastily fled the country.

After leaving the United Nations, Waldheim returned to Austria to begin his campaign for the presidency under the slogan "a man that the world trusts." But he made the mistake of publishing German and English versions of his memoirs. In the English edition, "In the Eye of the Storm," Waldheim wrote that after being wounded on the Russian front, he had spent the remainder of the war years working toward his doctorate at the University of Vienna.

However, in 1986, representatives of the World Jewish Congress ascertained that beginning in March 1942 he was posted to the German high command in Belgrade and spent much of the war as an intelligence and administrative officer in the Balkans. For much of that time, it became clear, he was attached to units involved in ruthless attempts to stamp out partisan resistance through so-called "cleansing operations" that ultimately took hundreds of thousands of lives through massacres and large-scale deportations.

Waldheim's response to his failure to mention these facts in his autobiography was that it would have been "too boring" to repeat every detail of his wartime service. There is no evidence that Waldheim participated directly in these campaigns or that he even sympathized with them.

But it was impossible to escape the conclusion that Waldheim was well aware of what was going on. At least one of the commanders he served under was executed as a war criminal, and Waldheim was listed as the recipient of a high award by the virulently anti-Semitic Nazi puppet regime in Croatia for service in a "cleansing" campaign in which an estimated 90,000 Yugoslavs, including women and children, died.

The uproar caused by these revelations forced the U.S. Justice Department to initiate a year-long investigation of whether Waldheim's wartime activities conflicted with American law. On April 28, 1987, then-Attorney General Edwin Meese III, prodded by strong recommendations from within the department, concluded that evidence existed for placing Waldheim on the "watch list" because of provisions in the immigration law "prohibiting entry to any foreign national who assisted or otherwise participated in activities amounting to persecution during World War II."

Throughout his presidency, about the only places where Waldheim found himself welcome were neighboring Germany, a scattering of Arab countries and, somewhat surprisingly, the Vatican. In 1987, Pope John Paul II, a long-time friend, turned aside widespread criticism to host the Austrian president on an official state visit. The pope defended his action on the grounds that he could not refuse an audience to a head of state from a country with a strong Catholic tradition unless he had clear-cut proof of the allegations against him.

Even in Austria, where majority public opinion continued to rally around him, Waldheim's record continued to be a matter of unending controversy. When his six-year term ended on July 8, 1992, Waldheim repeated his frequent assertion that it was unfair to equate members of his generation with the Nazi regime.

"The majority of them were sent into a war that they did not want," he said. "They had to wear a uniform that for many people, particularly the Jewish people became a symbol for persecution, misery and death. I have learned how difficult it was for me as a member of this generation to make clear a contradiction that is hardly understandable for the generation born later--namely the contradiction to have rejected this regime from the first hour on, even though I lived under this regime and wore its uniform."

Waldheim is survived by his wife, Elisabeth, whom he married in 1944, and their three children, the Associated Press reported from Vienna.

Staff writer Matt Schudel contributed to this article.