Austrian President Dies of Heart Stroke
Pakistan Times Monitoring Report

VIENNA (Austria): Austria's President Thomas Klestil has died in a Vienna hospital after suffering a heart attack on Monday.

Doctors had earlier said that his chances of survival were fading as his heart had stopped beating twice, triggering failures in other major organs.

Klestil, 71, had been on life support since suffering the heart attack in the week that he was due to step down from office.

Backdrop

He was on his way to a farewell press conference when he suffered the attack. A security guard restarted his heart with a defibrillator, and he was rushed to the AKH hospital by helicopter.

The cardiac arrest was caused by a respiratory condition which left him short of oxygen, the hospital said.

Doctors decided to place him in an induced coma and on an artificial lung to reduce strain on his organism.

Mr Klestil had several severe health crises after becoming president, including a bout of pneumonia in 1996 which kept him off work for several weeks and caused him to restrict the open-house meetings he had formerly conducted at the Hofburg palace.

He suffered another bout of pneumonia last year.

Sketch

Mr Klestil became president in 1992 as a dark horse candidate for the conservative People's Party. His popularity suffered because of crises in his private life as he separated from his wife in 1994.

He married Margit Loeffler, who had worked with him on the 1992 campaign, following his re-election in 1998.

Mr Klestil failed to turn his largely ceremonial position into one of real power and could not stop conservative Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel forming a government with Joerg Haider's far-right Freedom Party in 2000.

An Effective Member of EU

However, he was an effective representative of Austria's interests within the European Union.

He also won the respect of Austrians for repairing much of the damage to the country's international image caused by revelations about former president and UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim's role in the German army under Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

He was due to hand over the presidency this week to Social Democrat Heinz Fischer, who was elected in April.●