Austrian leader calls early election amid uproar over video

VIENNA — Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called for an early election after his vice chancellor resigned Saturday over a covertly shot video that showed him apparently promising government contracts to a purported Russian investor.

Kurz said he would ask President Alexander Van der Bellen to set a date for a new election “as soon as possible.”

Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache resigned after two German publications, the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and the weekly Der Spiegel, published extracts Friday of a video purportedly showing Strache offering Austrian government contracts to a Russian woman who was allegedly interested in investing large amounts of money in Austria.

Strache’s far-right, anti-immigrant Freedom Party is the smaller partner in Austria’s ruling government coalition with Kurz’s People’s Party. At a news conference late Saturday, Kurz said talks with remaining officials from the Freedom Party showed they were not willing to make the changes Kurz felt necessary to continue the current coalition.

Strache’s resignation was a black eye for the populist and nationalist forces who favor tighter European immigration policies. It came only a few days before the May 23-26 elections in 28 European Union nations to fill the European Parliament.

In his resignation statement earlier Saturday, Strache apologized but said he was set up in a “political assassination.” He conceded his behavior in the video was “stupid, irresponsible and a mistake.”

In the video, the source of which the publications declined to reveal, Strache and party colleague Johann Gudenus are heard telling the unnamed woman she could expect lucrative construction work if she bought Austria’s Kronen Zeitung newspaper and supported the Freedom Party. The video spanned six hours of drink-fueled conversation in a...