Russian Rightist Calls Off German Visit : Politics: Amid a wave of resistance, Zhirinovsky cancels 3-day trip and interview. But he meets with extremists in Austria.

BERLIN — Russia’s neo-fascist political star Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky on Wednesday abruptly canceled a planned three-day visit to Germany amid a wave of public and political resistance here to the prospect of his presence in the country.

The 47-year-old Zhirinovsky had been invited to Germany by the private television station RTL in Cologne to appear on an interview program Wednesday evening.

Once plans for the interview became known, politicians from all major national parties in Bonn demanded that the program be canceled, and some questioned whether the Russian political figure should even be allowed into the country.

Johannes Gerster, the deputy parliamentary leader of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats, labeled the visit “intolerable” and demanded that Zhirinovsky be declared persona non grata.

Speaking before the cancellation, Karsten Voigt, chief foreign policy spokesman for the opposition Social Democrats, urged government authorities to consider banning Zhirinovsky from the country.

Interior Ministry officials in Bonn reportedly hesitated for several days before deciding to issue Zhirinovsky a three-day visa, and government officials Wednesday said they had little choice in the matter.

“There are no legal grounds to refuse an elected Russian politician a visa,” said a German official, who noted that the government had recognized the recent Russian elections as fair and democratic.

Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party captured more than 20% of the vote in Russia’s parliamentary elections Dec. 12, a result that has instantly transformed the ultranationalist demagogue from a curiosity operating on the political fringe into a significant force in the new Parliament, with an estimated 66 seats in the 450-seat lower house.

The moderator of the German interview program, Guenter Jauch, said he had hoped to confront the Russian ultranationalist with some of his more aggressive statements, including a threat made two years ago that he would not hesitate to create “new Hiroshimas and Nagasakis” in Germany if the Germans made what he called “a wrong move” toward Russia.

Zhirinovsky reportedly canceled the German trip after hearing of the political reaction and also after learning he would not be appearing on the program alone.

According to RTL, an interview with former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev would have been included in the program, and Zhirinovsky would also have faced a prominent German expert on Russia, Wolfgang Leonard.

Zhirinovsky, who is presently in Austria, stopped briefly Tuesday at Munich’s airport to meet right-wing German publisher Gerhard Frey before traveling on to Vienna.

Despite his threats to annihilate Germany with a nuclear attack, Zhirinovsky has won friends on Germany’s extreme right by suggesting that Poland be carved up once again and shared with the Germans. Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and his Soviet counterpart, Josef Stalin, did exactly that in 1939 in the opening act of World War II.

In Austria, Zhirinovsky met with other rightists, including businessman Edwin Neuwirth, 67, who likes to extol his service as a member of the Third Reich’s elite Waffen SS, which functioned as a kind of Praetorian Guard for Hitler.

The German press agency Deutsche Presse Agenteur reported that at a news conference in the town of Reichenfels, Zhirinovsky boasted that Russia possesses new super weapons, far more powerful than nuclear bombs, that could destroy the planet.