Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider cannot be declared persona non grata in Rome whatever his views because Europeans enjoy freedom of movement, Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini said Wednesday.
"We definitely cannot declare Haider an undesirable person," Dini said on RAI national radio. "We can say that we do not like him, but there is freedom of movement in Europe."
Haider will be received in audience by Pope John Paul II on Saturday and present a Christmas tree from his native province of Carinthia.
Strong protests against his presence here have been made by political figures, the Jewish community, associations of World War II partisan fighters against Nazism and wartime deportees.
Haider has sparked widespread anger by various remarks, including praising Hitler's Waffen SS and referring to Nazi concentration camps as "punishment camps," implying he believes they were legitimate places of punishment instead of instruments of totalitarian terror.
"We can disagree with his xenophobic ideas, and that was indeed done by the European Union for fear these ideas might find a place in Austrian government policy," said Dini, a member of a centre-left Italian coalition government.
"But that hasn't happened. So let Mr Haider come.....let him bring his big tree to Vatican City, we cannot have any objections."
There was international outrage when Haider's extreme right-wing Freedom party was admitted to an Austrian government coalition early this year.
The European Union, to which Austria brelongs, imposed sanctions to register strongly felt disapproval. These were lifted in September.
Last week, the Vatican defended its decision to receive Haider. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's secretary of state, said: "No one should be surprised by the fact that the Holy See is open to everyone." -- ROME (AFP)
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