BERLIN: Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Saturday that he will step down in a bid to defuse a government crisis triggered by prosecutors’ announcement that he is a target of a corruption investigation.
Kurz, 35, said he has proposed to Austria’s president that Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg become chancellor. But Kurz himself will remain in a key political position: he said he will become the head of his conservative Austrian People’s Party’s parliamentary group.
Kurz’s party had closed ranks behind him after the prosecutors’ announcement on Wednesday, which followed searches at the chancellery and his party’s offices. But its junior coalition partner, the Greens, said Friday that Kurz couldn’t remain as chancellor and demanded that his party nominate an “irreproachable person” to replace him. The coalition government took office in January, 2020.
The Greens’ leader, Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler, welcomed Kurz’s decision as “a right and important step.”
“This means that we can continue our work in government,” he said.
Kurz and his close associates are accused of trying to secure his rise to the leadership of his party and the country with the help of manipulated polls and friendly reports in the media, financed with public money. Kurz, who became the People’s Party leader and then chancellor in 2017, denies wrongdoing.
The Greens said the probe created a “disastrous” impression. In a separate case, anti-corruption authorities put Kurz under investigation in May on suspicion of making false statements to a parliamentary commission, an allegation he also rejected.
Opposition leaders had called for Kurz to go and planned to bring a no-confidence motion against him Tuesday in parliament.
“We are still in a very sensitive phase in Austria — the pandemic is not yet over and the economic upswing has only just begun,” while a reform of the country’s tax system to help curb greenhouse gas emissions has been negotiated but is not yet implemented, Kurz said.
“What we need now are stable conditions,” he told reporters in Vienna. “So, in order to resolve the stalemate, I want to make way to prevent chaos and ensure stability.”
He insisted again that the accusations against him “are false and I will be able to clear this up — I am deeply convinced of that.”
Kurz said of the Greens’ demand for his replacement: “Many tell me that this is unfair and ... you can imagine that I personally would also be grateful if the presumption of innocence in our country really applied to everyone.”
He insisted that the accusations against him were being “mixed up” with old text messages that have surfaced in recent days. “Some of them are messages that I definitely wouldn’t formulate the same way again, but I am only a human being with emotions and also flaws,” he said.
Kurz will keep his party’s leadership as well as becoming its parliamentary group leader.
He responded to the demand for an untainted new leader with Schallenberg, 52. Although loyal to Kurz, Schallenberg has a background in diplomacy rather than party politics.
Schallenberg already served as foreign minister in a non-partisan interim government that ran the European Union nation of 8.9 million people for several months after Kurz’s first coalition with the far-right Freedom Party collapsed in 2019.
Kurz pulled the plug on that government after a video surfaced showing the vice chancellor and Freedom Party leader at the time, Heinz-Christian Strache, appearing to offer favors to a purported Russian investor.
Austria’s next regular parliamentary election is due in 2024.
Kurz to quit as Austrian chancellor amid corruption probe
https://arab.news/mdtpv
Kurz to quit as Austrian chancellor amid corruption probe
- Kurz said he has proposed to Austria's president that Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg become chancellor
- Kurz's party had closed ranks behind him after the prosecutors' announcement on Wednesday
US senators visit key Ukrainian port city as they push for fresh sanctions on Russia
- The visit and the push for Congress to take up sanctions on Russia come at a crucial moment in the conflict
WASHINGTON: A delegation of US senators was returning Wednesday from a trip to Ukraine, hoping to spur action in Congress for a series of sanctions meant to economically cripple Moscow and pressure President Vladimir Putin to make key concessions in peace talks.
It was the first time US senators have visited Odesa, Ukraine’s third-most populous city and an economically crucial Black Sea port that has been particularly targeted by Russia, since the war began nearly four years ago. Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, Chris Coons, Richard Blumenthal and Sheldon Whitehouse made the trip. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis had planned to join but was unable to for personal reasons.
“One of the things we heard wherever we stopped today was that the people of Ukraine want a peace deal, but they want a peace deal that preserves their sovereignty, that recognizes the importance of the integrity of Ukraine,” Shaheen said on a phone call with reporters.
The visit and the push for Congress to take up sanctions on Russia come at a crucial moment in the conflict. Delegations for the two sides were also meeting in Switzerland for two days of US-brokered talks, but neither side appeared ready to budge on key issues like territory and future security guarantees. The sanctions, senators hoped, could prod Putin toward settling for peace, as the US has set a June deadline for settlement.
“Literally nobody believes that Russia is acting in good faith in the negotiations with our government and with the Ukrainians,” Whitehouse said. “And so pressure becomes the key.”
Still, legislation to impose tough sanctions on Russia has been on hold in Congress for months.
Senators have put forward a range of sanction measures, including one sweeping bill that would allows the Trump administration to impose tariffs and secondary sanctions on countries that purchase Russia’s oil, gas, uranium and other exports, which are crucial to financing Russia’s military. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has also advanced a series of more-targeted bills that would sanction China’s efforts to support Russia’s military, commandeer frozen Russian assets and go after what’s known as Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers being used to circumvent sanctions already in place.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has co-sponsored the Senate’s sweeping sanctions and tariff legislation, also released a statement during the Munich Security Conference this weekend saying that Senate Majority Leader John Thune had committed to bringing up the sanctions bill once it clearly has the 60 votes needed to move through the Senate.
“This legislation will be a game changer,” Graham said. “President Trump has embraced it. It is time to vote.”
Blumenthal, who co-sponsored that bill alongside Graham, also said there is bipartisan support for the legislation, which he called a “very tough sledgehammer of sanctions and tariffs,” but he also noted that “we need to work out some of the remaining details.” Democrats, and a handful of Republicans, have been opposed to President Donald Trump’s campaign to impose tariffs around the world in an effort to strike trade deals and spur more manufacturing in the US
In the House, Democrats are opposed to the tariff provisions of that bill. Instead, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, has proposed separate legislation that makes it more difficult for Trump to waive sanctions, but does away with the tariff provisions.
A separate bill, led by the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks, would bolster US military support for Ukraine by $8 billion. Democrats currently need one more Republican to support an effort to force a vote on that bill.
Once they return to the US, the senators said they would detail how US businesses based in Ukraine have been attacked by Russia. The Democrats are also hoping to build pressure on Trump to send more US weapons to Ukraine. “Putin understands weapons, not words,” Blumenthal said.
Still, the lawmakers will soon return to a Washington where the Trump administration is ambivalent about its long-term commitments to securing peace in Ukraine, as well as Europe. For now, at least, they were buoyed by the conversations from their European counterparts and Republican colleagues.
“We and the Republican senators who were with us in Munich spoke with one voice about our determination to continue to support Ukraine,” Coons said.
