Haider lashes out at opponents at home and abroad

In an address to the 2,500 delegates, he made his opinion clear of one-sidedness in payments or penalties involving Nazism.

Haider indicated his dissatisfaction with the extent of the recent agreements on Austrian restitution to Nazi victims. "There's got to be an end to it sometime", he declared.

On the restitution payments, Haider asserted that a "dual commitment" had been made. In Austria there were untold thousands of "people driven from their homes." For them the same was valid as for victims of Nazism.

With this he was referring to Sudeten Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia immediately after the war, and to Yugoslavia's ousting of German-speakers from the territory of present-day Slovenia.

In exchanges with Austria last year, Slovenian president Milan Kucan retorted to complaints by saying that "only Nazi collaborators" had been expelled.

In his speech, Haider also referred to a notorious mid-1990s case of Nazi "revivalism" in Austria.

In 1995, Hans-Joerg Schimanek Junior, son of a prominent right- wing Freedom Party politician, was sentenced to 15 years jail for Neo-Nazi activities. The sentence was later reduced to eight years.

Schimanek Junior was convicted of secretly training young boys in paramilitary combat, and plotting the long-term revival of a Nazi state.

Haider said: "In Austria, little Schimanek is locked up for eight years because he did a little military-sports program. In Germany, an RAF (Red Army Faction) sympathizer is allowed to be foreign minister."

Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer admits one-time involvement in German leftist militant circles, but denies any link to the terrorist RAF.

Haider also turned on foreign critics of his FP such as French president Jacques Chirac and prime minister of Germany's Bavaria state Edmund Stoiber. He declared them "pathetic figures."

(dpa)