Austria The Trojan Guest

Czechoslovakia's Vaclav Havel was just an oppressed dissident playwright when he received an invitation last year to give the keynote address at the 1990 Salzburg music and drama festival. He accepted, figuring he would not be allowed to attend since the Communist government had not let him leave the country in many years. But now Havel is the government -- and he had R.S.V.P.ed, after all. So off to Mozart's birthplace the Czechoslovak President went last week, even if it did mean meeting his Austrian counterpart, Kurt Waldheim, thus breaching the international isolation imposed on the Austrian leader because of his dubious wartime past.

But if Waldheim thought he would get a p.r. windfall from Havel's visit, he underestimated his man. Though a beaming Waldheim introduced Havel to the crowd in glowing terms, the playwright President did not return the compliment. Instead, using language that was indirect but clear enough, he verbally lacerated his opposite number, who for years concealed his service as an officer in a German army unit linked to Nazi atrocities in the Balkans during World War II. Choosing the fear of history as his theme, Havel called "the expectation that one can glide through history unpunished and rewrite one's own biography" one of "the traditional Central European delusions." More pointedly, Havel declared, "Whoever fears to look his own past in the face must necessarily fear what is to come. Lies cannot save us from lies." Asked afterward whether Havel might have had him in mind, Waldheim was belligerent. "Certainly not," he told Austrian TV. "I did not rewrite my biography."

Denounced even by some of his staunchest followers for agreeing to associate with the ostracized Austrian, Havel plainly hoped his words would pacify his critics. He apparently saw to it that his friend Richard von Weizsacker, the West German President, also attended the festival's opening, since Von Weizsacker is widely respected in Europe for his blunt acknowledgments of Germany's blame for the Holocaust. Both leaders repeatedly emphasized that their visits were private, not official, and for added effect, they cut their stays short, leaving Austria within several hours of their arrival. Still, the visit enraged many Jews, four of whom, including American Rabbi Avi Weiss, were arrested for public disorder after they shouted at Waldheim before Havel spoke.

Since his election in 1986, Waldheim has wooed only one other Western head of state to Austria, Cypriot President George Vassiliou, who visited Vienna in early July. With two years left in his term and with the boycott against him broken, Waldheim might yet have other callers. But after his encounter with Havel, he just might prefer his solitude.