Kurt Waldheim, the former UN Secretary-General who was elected President of Austria despite an international scandal about his wartime service in the German army, has died at the age of 88.

The Austrian state broadcaster ORF said that Waldheim, who was hospitalised in Vienna last month because of an infection, died of heart failure early this afternoon.

Waldheim headed the United Nations from 1972 to 1982, winning plaudits for his management of the organisation. But his election as president in 1986 was overshadowed by revelations that he had lied about his service in a Wehrmacht unit known to have massacred partisans in the Balkans in the latter stages of the war.

The scandal broke during the campaign, prompted in part by a memoir Waldheim wrote himself in which he clamed to have been invalided out of the army in 1941 - a claim that was quickly disproved.

He won the election nevertheless, only to see himself shunned by the international community and declared persona non grata by the United States - a ban which was never lifted and which prevented him joining in the UN's 50th anniversary celebrations in 1995. He served until 1992, during which time Austria found itself increasingly isolated on the diplomatic front.

The current Austrian President, Heinz Fischer, today issued a statement expressing his "deepest condolences" at his predecessor's passing and officials lowered the flag flying outside his office to half-staff.

Born in St Andrä-Wördern in December 1918, Mr Waldheim studied law at Vienna University, enrolling as a reservist in the Austrian army. After Anschluss in 1938, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht.

In his official biographies, Mr Waldheim initially said that he had been wounded at the Russian front in 1941 and returned to Austria to continue his studies.

Only under pressure did he gradually revise his official resume to say that he was transferred to the Balkans in April 1942 went to Arsakli, Greece, as an interpreter that summer and, in April 1943, became an assistant adjutant with Army Group E, Department I-C. Its commander, General Alexander Loehr, was later executed in Yugoslavia for war crimes.

The World Jewish Congress published documents showing that Waldheim’s unit killed partisans and civilians. Some of the papers bore Waldheim’s signature or initial. But he kept insisting that his job was merely to verify their authenticity, not to act on the information or give orders.

As pressure mounted from all sides, Yugoslav newspapers published a facsimile of a document showing Waldheim’s name on a list of German officers who took part in the infamous Mount Kozara operation.

According to some Yugoslav versions, 68,000 people - including 23,000 children - died in the offensive. Waldheim originally declared he had been behind the lines near Kozara. Later, he said he had confused the geography.

In Austria, Waldheim’s backers saw him as an innocent victim of an international smear campaign. But his opponents kept up their calls for his resignation because of the huge loss of prestige for the country caused by his election.

In February 1988, a government-appointed international commission of six historians investigating his wartime service said that it found no proof that Waldheim himself committed war crimes. But it also made clear that his record was far from unblemished. The panel declared that Waldheim was in "direct proximity to criminal actions".

The report said that Waldheim knew about German army atrocities in the Balkans and never undertook any action to prevent or oppose them. But the historians in question admitted later that they had dropped a reference to Waldheim’s "moral guilt" for fear of overstepping their mandate with a "judgmental" statement.

In April 1987, the US Justice Department put Waldheim on a "watch list" of undesirable aliens that barred him from entering the United States - an embarrassment no other Austrian public figure had ever experienced.

After the war, Waldheim entered the diplomatic service, rising quickly and becoming first ambassador to Canada and then to the United Nations. In 1968 he became Foreign Minister, a post he held for two years.

After starting another term as permanent representative in the UN, he ran for the Austrian presidency for the first time in 1971, losing to the Socialist candidate, Franz Jonas.

He was elected Secretary-General of the UN the following year, serving two terms before being vetoed by China in his attempt at a third.

Although Mr Waldheim travelled to many crisis areas, including the Middle East, he never gained the reputation of peacemaker enjoyed by other UN chiefs. He is survived by his wife, Elisabeth, whom he married in 1944, and their three children.

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