Four years after branding him a "devil," Austria's Social Democrat party on Saturday formed a governing coalition with far-right firebrand Joerg Haider in the southern province of Carinthia.
Haider, whose Freedom Party triumphed in last weekend's provincial election, is now certain to hold on to the post of governor in his home province, through an alliance with a party that once shunned him as an extremist.
Following 12 hours of talks, Haider struck an agreement with the leader of the center-left Social Democrats in Carinthia, Peter Ambrozy, concerning the split of posts between the two parties and the 2004 budget.
Both parties announced the coalition agreement early on Saturday.
The Freedom Party took 42.5 percent of votes in the province last weekend, against 38 percent for the Social Democrats, 11.6 percent for Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel's conservative People's Party, with the Green party taking the remaining 6.7 percent.
Ambrozy explained that his party's goal was to "be actively and contructively involved" in governing Carinthia over the next five years.
He said that although an alliance between Social Democrats, Conservatives and Greens, aimed at sidelining the Freedom Party, was a tempting prospect -- it would not have reflected the will of the voters.
"I think the voters of Carinthia have expressed their will very clearly," he told the Austrian news agency APA.
But Saturday's agreement represents a break from the policy pursued by the Social Democrats since the 1980s, which has been to sideline the far-right movement as extremist and undemocratic.
When the Freedom Party joined forces with the People's Party to form a ruling coalition in Vienna in February 2000, the Social Democrats accused Schuessel of striking a "deal with the devil."
Haider stepped down as party leader in 2000 after his reputation for xenophobia and Nazi sympathies barred him from taking national office, but he remains the Freedom Party's strongman and Carinthia is his last true bastion.
For political analyst Peter Ulram, the alliance does not come as a great surprise: "In Carinthia, there is not much difference between the different parties on fundamental issues."
Carinthia is a deeply conservative province, riven with ethnic prejudice against its Slovenian minority, and where the Freedom Party's nationalist anti-immigrant platform has wide appeal.
Asked about the apparent shift in policy, Ambrozy denied that the two parties had ever radically diverged on core issues.
But he said the coalition in Carinthia was an isolated case that would not affect relations between the two parties at national level -- although he added that the Social Democrat leadership had not opposed the alliance.
However Ulram believes it is impossible to rule out a future national coalition between the two parties, against the People's Party.
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