Austrian parliament backs Nazi victim fund
    VIENNA, June 1 (Reuter) - Austria's parliament on Thursday
 voted in favour of setting up a compensation fund for an
 estimated 30,000 victims of dictator Adolf Hiter's Nazi rule,
 all of them living abroad.
    Deputies from most of Austria's political parties, including
 the far right, backed a government bill to establish the 500
 million schilling ($50 million) fund but the leftist Greens
 voted against, arguing that the cash offered was not enough.
    The Austrian coalition government of Social Democrats and
 conservatives plans to compensate the thousands of people who
 were thrown into concentration camps because they were Jews,
 communists or homosexuals and those who fled into exile to avoid
 persecution.
    The fund was aimed at Austrians hounded from the 1938
 annexation of Austria by the Third Reich to the end of World War
 Two. Claimants would have to prove they were Austrian citizens
 during that period and most will now have a different
 nationality. Austrians who returned after 1945 have received
 some compensation.
    The Green Party said the delay in setting up the fund was a
 national disgrace and demanded that 1.5 billion schillings ($150
 million) be made available over five years.
    Austria had avoided the question of compensation for most of
 the postwar period and claimed that the country was the first
 victim of Hitler's aggression. But political leaders have
 publicly acknowledged in the past two years that Austrians were
 also ``willing servants of Nazism.''

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