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US Refuses to Take Waldheim off Nazi "Watch List"
The United States has turned down a request to take former Austrian President and UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim off the Nazi "watch list" of people barred from US soil, the State Department said Tuesday.
Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner on Monday asked U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to remove Waldheim from the list because CIA files opened April 27 had no proof he was a war criminal.
"The secretary made it clear that we're not in a position to change the U.S. government's determination on Mr. Waldheim, and the secretary took no new positions on the matter," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
"We think that the position that he's taken is well justified. CIA files don't really provide any new or relevant information on the case. They don't change our decision with respect to his (Waldheim) inclusion in the look-out," Boucher said.
Under the U.S. law, anyone who participated in World War II persecution is barred from U.S. soil. Waldheim, 82, has been barred since April 1987, when an investigation found he served in the German army in the Balkans in the 1940s.
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