Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg to serve as the country's interim leader

VIENNA (AP) — Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg will serve as the country's interim leader while the far-right Freedom Party attempts to put together a new coalition government, the president's office said Wednesday.

Schallenberg, 55, will take on the duties of outgoing Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who announced his resignation over the weekend after his efforts to put together a coalition without the Freedom Party collapsed. Nehammer plans to step down on Friday.

President Alexander Van der Bellen's office said in a statement that the head of state will formally task Schallenberg with “continuing the management of the chancellery and leading the interim government.”

It will be Schallenberg’s second — and, again, likely brief — stint as Austria’s leader. Schallenberg served as chancellor for less than two months in late 2021 after the resignation of Sebastian Kurz, before passing the job to Nehammer and returning to the Foreign Ministry.

The anti-immigration, euroskeptic and Russia-friendly Freedom Party won Austria’s parliamentary election in September, but was initially shunned by other parties.

After Nehammer announced his resignation, his conservative Austrian People’s Party made an abrupt U-turn on its previous refusal to contemplate working with the Freedom Party under its leader, Herbert Kickl.

On Monday, Kickl received a mandate to try to form what would be the first national government led by the far right since World War II. That's a process that could take weeks or months, and isn't guaranteed to succeed.

Schallenberg, who spent much of his earlier career as a diplomat, has been foreign minister since 2019 apart from his brief previous interlude as chancellor. He has said he wouldn’t stay in the government under Kickl.

Kickl says he will approach talks on a coalition with clear expectations of the People's Party, including “an awareness of who won the election" and “an understanding of who is responsible for the mistakes of the past." He said he's prepared for new elections if talks fail.

The conservatives' interim leader, Christian Stocker, said Wednesday he will meet Kickl. He says he wants “honest answers to questions that are important for us and Austria.”

“There must be an honest answer to whether we want to be a constructive and reliable part of the European Union, or the opposite,” he said. “There must be an honest answer to whether we want to orient ourselves toward the free world, or toward dictatorships.”