Reports: Ex-UN Chief Waldheim Dead at 88

VIENNA, Austria – Former U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who was elected Austrian president despite an international scandal about his secretive World War II military service for the Nazis, died Thursday, Austrian media reported. He was 88.

Waldheim, who was hospitalized in Vienna late last month with a fever-causing infection, died of heart failure with family members at his bedside, state broadcaster ORF reported.

Waldheim’s tenure as U.N. chief from 1972-82 and his election as president in 1986 were overshadowed by revelations that he belonged to a German army unit that committed atrocities in the Balkans during World War II.

While Waldheim himself was not implicated in wrongdoing, his initial denial of such service – and then assertions that he and fellow Austrians were only doing their duty – led to international censure and a decision by Washington to place him on a "watch list" of persons prohibited from visiting the U.S.

That ban was never lifted.

President Heinz Fischer issued a statement expressing his "deepest condolences," and officials lowered the flag flying outside his office to half-staff.