BERLIN, - Nearly four Germans in five oppose diplomatic sanctions against Austria for allowing the entry of Joerg Haider's far-right Freedom Party into government.
In a poll by the Forsa institute for Deutsche Welle television, 79 percent said they opposed the sanctions which Austria's 14 European Union partners say they will carry out to isolate it politically.
Left-leaning Germans were more likely to favour the sanctions, the poll found, with only 67 percent of Green party adherents opposing sanctions. The poll found that 88 percent of supporters of the conservative Christian Democrats were opposed.
The poll involved 1,000 people on February 1 and 2.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's centre-left government has strongly backed EU calls for sanctions following the entry of the Freedom Party into the Austrian coalition.
The general secretary of Schroeder's Social Democrats, Franz Muentefering, also criticised the move, which ended 30 years of Social Democrat rule in Vienna.
"This is a black day for Austria and for Europe," he said in a statement.