World Report

ROME (JTA) -- Despite reports to the contrary, Pope John Paul II did not meet with an anti-Semitic priest during his current trip to Poland, according to the chief Vatican spokesman and a Jewish leader in Warsaw.

Stanislaw Krajewski, a member of the board of the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland, said Monday that on Saturday the pope had visited an ecumenical center in Gdansk that had been built by Father Henryk Jankowski, but "he did not meet with the anti-Semitic priest."

Reports of a meeting apparently originated from Jankowski himself.

After making anti-Semitic statements on several occasions, Jankowski was barred in 1997 from preaching for a year.

Vienna mayor vows to return artworks

VIENNA (JTA) -- Vienna will soon return 700 artworks that came into the city's possession during and after World War II, according to the city's mayor.

Michael Haupl made the vow to Jewish leaders last Friday at a meeting in New York hosted by the Appeal of Conscience Foundation.

A commission he appointed to look into the matter will make its decisions about the 700 works known within a few weeks, he said.

Haupl also said he supports building in Vienna a proposed museum of tolerance whose main function would be to educate people about the Holocaust.

Ku Klux Klan chapter set up in Australia

SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) -- The Ku Klux Klan recently established chapters in Australia for the first time.

An Australian newspaper quoted Peter Coleman, the chapters' founder, as saying that "there is a Jew under every rock" and that homosexuals are abnormal.

Coleman was expelled from Australia's extremist One Nation Party after party officials learned of his Klan activities.

Le Pen convicted of inciting hatred

BERLIN (JTA) -- A German court convicted a French far-right leader for inciting racial hatred and ordered him to pay a fine, German prosecutors said last week.

The charges stem from a 1997 news conference in Munich at which Jean-Marie Le Pen repeated his oft-quoted remark that the Holocaust is a "mere detail of history."