ASSOCIATED PRESS: VIENNA, Austria — The biggest winner in Austria's elections got the president's approval Wednesday to begin forming a coalition government that they have promised will exclude the country's powerful far-right parties.
But it remains to be seen if the center-left Social Democrats' resistance to the right will work in the winning party's favor.
The Social Democrats won the most votes in parliamentary elections Sept. 28, with 29.3 percent. Wednesday, President Heinz Fischer asked the party's leader, Werner Faymann, to try to form what Fischer called the "decisive" government the country needs.
Complicating Faymann's task is the resounding success of the two far-right parties — the Freedom Party and the Alliance for the Future of Austria, which took third and fourth place in the election. Their combined total of 28.2 percent puts them nearly on an equal footing with the Social Democrats — and has made them difficult to ignore.
Faymann has rejected forming a coalition with either far-right party. He stuck by that stance Wednesday but acknowledged it could hamper his efforts to forge a government.
"It's a tactical drawback but I believe it's an advantage for the country," he said.
Animosity between the rightist leaders made it appear unlikely at first that they would consider collaborating with each other. But the two men met Wednesday in an apparently successful attempt to warm relations.
"It was a get-together of winners," Joerg Haider, leader of the Alliance for the Future of Austria, said in a statement afterward.
The atmosphere in the meeting was positive and constructive, the statement said. It also said the parties do not "reject taking responsibility for creating a new government." Austrian Social Democrats Asked to Form a Government >>> By Veronika Oleksyn | October 8, 2008
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