Austria's far-right Freedom Party has fired the spokesman for its Vienna branch for reportedly posting quotes from wartime Nazi marching songs on Facebook. "We are looking closely into the matter, but independent of that the Vienna FPOe and Stefan Gotschacher have gone their separate ways with immediate effect," the party said on Wednesday. According to the Falter weekly, Gotschacher posted on the social networking website lines from the Nazi era song "SS marschiert im Feindesland" ("SS marches in enemy land").

VIENNA (Reuters) - Social Democrats, conservatives and Greens formed a governing coalition in the Austrian province of Carinthia on Tuesday after an election rout of the far-right Freedom Party in its traditional southern stronghold. Corruption scandals punished the anti-immigrant Freedom Party in Carinthia, where late leader Joerg Haider had built it into a national political force. Billionaire Frank Stronach's new eurosceptic party has also sapped its support.

By Thorsten Severin and Alexandra Hudson BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government decided against trying to outlaw the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), branded by its critics as neo-Nazi, over doubts that judges would back such a move. The government said it would instead support a separate bid by Germany's 16 federal states to ask the Constitutional Court to ban the party which the domestic intelligence service has called "racist, anti-Semitic and revisionist".

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet decided on Wednesday not to try to outlaw the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) due to splits within the ruling coalition, leaving Germany's states to pursue their own ban. Germany's domestic intelligence service has branded the NPD "racist, anti-Semitic and revisionist" but banning a political party is especially sensitive in Germany, still haunted by memories of Nazi and communist regimes which silenced dissent.