Austrian President Thomas Klestil was hospitalised in a critical condition on Monday after suffering a heart attack three days before the end of his term, his office said.
”He is in a critical condition,” spokesperson Elfie Thiemer said, confirming reports from Vienna’s AKH hospital about the 71-year-old president, who is due to hand over to his elected successor on Thursday.
Klestil was rushed to hospital by helicopter from his private residence in Vienna early on Monday, the Austrian news agency APA reported.
The president was revived by one of his bodyguards who used a defibrillator to jolt his heart back into action after he collapsed as he prepared to leave for his office, APA said.
By late morning the director of the AKH, Reinhard Krepler, told journalists that the president ”was still in a critical condition”.
Hospital spokesperson Karin Fehringer said he is suffering from a lung condition but declined to give details.
Klestil is due to stand down from the Austrian presidency on Thursday, handing over to socialist Heinz Fischer, who won a presidential election held in April.
The Austrian head of state, who has served two terms, had severe pneumonia in 1996 from which he took several months to recover. He suffered a pulmonary embolism in the same year.
Klestil had lung problems again in June last year, said the president’s chief spokesperson, Hans Magenschaab, adding that it appeared to flare up again in recent days.
The president also underwent surgery to both his Achilles tendons in November last year after falling in the bath.
In keeping with the Austrian constitution, Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel on Monday took over Klestil’s functions, a statement from the chancellor’s office said.
The president had been due to hold his last press conference as head of state later in the day.
The Speaker of the Austrian Parliament, Andreas Kohl, said that while Fischer’s swearing in will go ahead as planned on Thursday, a farewell ceremony for Klestil will be postponed until his health recovers.
”We are all stunned at the news, and we wish him a speedy recovery,” Kohl told APA.
Klestil was first elected to the presidency in 1992 as a member of the conservative People’s Party, replacing Kurt Waldheim.
He was re-elected for a second term in July 1998.
Klestil, who spent long periods in the United States as a diplomat before he was elected president, was little known to the Austrian public when he first took office.
The son of a transport official, he was born in Vienna on November 4 1932 and studied economics before becoming an adviser to the government in that field in 1957.
His political career began in earnest in 1959 when he became a member of the Austrian delegation to the Vienna-based Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Klestil went on to become Austria’s ambassador to Washington but came back in 1966 to serve as secretary to then-chancellor Josef Klaus, before returning to the US as consul general in Los Angeles. He held the post until 1974.
In 1978 Klestil became ambassador to the United Nations in New York, before returning to Washington in 1982.
Early in his presidency, Klestil sought as much contact with the public as possible, but his outings were curtailed after his health crisis in 1996.
He was first hospitalised in September but only returned to his office in January the following year after carrying out his duties from his sickbed for a while.
Klestil earned something of a reputation for outspokenness when he failed to hide his distaste last year when Schussel for the second time formed a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party, which was first led into the government by firebrand leader Joerg Haider in February 2000.
He also created a minor scandal in 1994 when he left his first wife, Edith, for diplomat Margit Loeffler, whom he finally married in 1998 after he won his second presidential election. — Sapa-AFP