The Austrian press agency announced the death of Kurt Waldheim on Thursday. He was 88 years old and, according to his son in law, he suffered a cardiovascular failure.

Waldheim, whose election isolated Austrian internationally owing to his adamant refusal to discuss his past in the Nazi Wehrmacht, served as Austrian president from 1986 to 1992.

The controversy surrounding Waldheim was particularly problematic for Austria, forcing a tardy reckoning of the nation's complicity in Nazi crimes. Austria had continued to portray itself as a victim of the Third Reich, rather than its collaborator, long after Germany was paying reparations and banning neo-Nazi groups.

In his role as UN Secretary General from 1972 to 1981, the career diplomat - born on 21 December 1918 in the village St Andae near Vienna - was one of Austria's leading post-war figures.

Michele Montas, the spokesperson for current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, said today that the UN will honor its former chief by lowering the flags of UN-member states in front of the UN's New York headquarters to half mast.

"The UN secretary-general notes that Mr. Waldheim served the United Nations at a crucial period in the history of the organization -- from 1972 to 1981," Montas said on June 14. "The secretary-general extends his condolences to Mr. Waldheim's family as well as to the Austrian government and people.”