Israelis angry with Austrian leader

There's been an angry reaction in Israel to a newspaper interview in which the Austrian chancellor, Wolfgang Schuessel, described his country as the first victim of the Nazis.

In the interview with the Jerusalem Post, Mr Schuessel said the Nazi German regime had taken Austria by force in 1938.

The statement appeared to contradict the acknowledgement in 1993 by the then chancellor, Franz Vranitsky, that Austria had been a willing ally of the Nazis and had participated in the mass murder of European Jews.

An Israeli official of the anti-Nazi Simon Wiesenthal Centre Ephraim Zuroff said he would expect to hear such rhetoric only from Joerg Haider, the former leader of the right-wing Freedom Party in Austria.

Mr Schuessel's office says he was quoted out of context, and had emphasised in the interview that Austria bore moral responsibility for the Holocaust. Israel withdrew its ambassador from Vienna earlier this year because the Freedom Party joined the Austrian government; in the interview, Mr Schuessel said the time was now right for Israel to send a new ambassador.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service