AUSTRIAN FAR-RIGHT leader Joerg Haider, a charismatic populist who helped thrust anti-immigrant politics into the European mainstream, was killed in a car accident yesterday.

Haider, 58, who led the right into a coalition government from 2000 to 2006, polarised Austria and drew international condemnation with his anti-foreigner outbursts and for appearing to endorse some Nazi policies.

Last month, after years of retreat into provincial politics, he helped engineer a surge of Austria's far right to about 30% of the vote in a parliamentary election, mining discontent over feuding governing parties, inflation and immigration.

His spokesman Stefan Petzner said Haider, who was governor of Carinthia province, had been driving to his rural home near Klagenfurt early yesterday morning for a family gathering to mark his mother's 90th birthday when the accident occurred.

The government car he was driving skidded out of control after he overtook another vehicle. His car hit a concrete traffic barrier and rolled over several times, police said.

Haider was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital.

"This is for us like the end of the world. He wasn't just my boss but also my best friend," Petzner said.

Haider shook up Austria's political scene with his plain-spoken, engaging manner. He struck a chord with ordinary people and was on good personal terms with political foes.

Austrians of every political stripe voiced shock at news of his death and said he had influenced public life, for better or worse, as no-one else had over the past 20 years. Mourners began depositing wreaths and condolence letters and lighting candles in front of Carinthia government headquarters even before dawn broke.

Along with France's Jean Marie Le Pen, Haider was instrumental in moving the far right from the political fringes towards the mainstream on the continent.

He sparked criticism by making foreign trips to see leaders like Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Gaddafi.

In the 1990s, he reproached Austria's government by citing the "proper labour policies" of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. On another occasion he referred to Nazi concentration camps in a parliamentary debate as "penal camps". He once praised veterans of the murderous Waffen SS as "decent men of character".

Haider denied Nazi tendencies. Drawing on fears of immigration he led the Freedom Party with a shock 27% of the vote into a governing coalition with the conservative People's Party in 2000.

His triumph stirred widespread condemnation and temporary European Union sanctions against Austria.

After power struggles within Freedom, Haider formed the Alliance for the Future of Austria in 2005. It became junior partner in the governing coalition while the Freedom Party defected into opposition.

"I'm a long-distance runner. We changed a lot of things in Carinthia and we'll do that in Austria at large too. And I won't have to become chancellor (prime minister) for that to happen," Haider said in an interview in the regional Kleine Zeitung daily that hit news stands hours after his death.

In a comment echoed by many, President Heinz Fischer, a Social Democrat, said Haider was "a politician of great talent" and impact who both enchanted and repelled his contemporaries.

Haider's father was once a member of Hitler's Storm Troopers. His mother was a teacher who had been a Hitler Youth leader. A marathon runner as well as passionate skier, Haider was married with two grown daughters.