To the Editor:

You report (front page, Feb. 4) that Austria's new government includes Jorg Haider's anti-immigrant Freedom Party, ''setting the country on a collision course with the European Union.''

Yet the worst possible thing the European Union could do is to try to isolate Mr. Haider.

This isolation will fuel xenophobia in Austria by instilling an us-versus-them mentality. And the rest of Europe had better brace itself for the rise of other extremist political groups because of the cozy relationships that the dominant parties in Germany and France, for example, have had with big business and the labor unions.

Imposing restrictions on Austria will create a self-fulfilling prophecy.


Atlanta, Feb. 4, 2000