Haider is governor of Carinthia

Klagenfurt - The far-right Austrian leader, Mr Joerg Haider, was elected governor of the state of Carinthia yesterday, the Austrian…

Klagenfurt - The far-right Austrian leader, Mr Joerg Haider, was elected governor of the state of Carinthia yesterday, the Austrian APA agency said.

Mr Haider's Freedom Party (FPOe) became the majority party in the state in regional elections on March 7th, winning 42.09 per cent of the vote in a state which had been dominated by the Social Democrats since the second World War.

The 16 Freedom Party deputies supported Mr Haider; the 12 Social Democrats supported their candidate, Mr Herbert Schiller, and the eight deputies of the conservative People's Party (OeVP) abstained.

Mr Haider, the son of a minor Nazi official, was governor from 1989 to '91, but was forced to resign after remarking: "in the Third Reich they had a sound employment policy."