Austrian President Thomas Klestil was in critical condition after being revived following a heart failure yesterday, just days before he was due to step down from the largely ceremonial office. The Austrian rescue agency OeAMTC said Klestil was flown by emergency helicopter from his Vienna residence to a hospital in the capital. ?The heart failure and resuscitation took place in his villa. His bodyguard resuscitated him and called for emergency doctors,? a spokesman for OeAMTC said. Vienna General Hospital said Klestil was in critical condition, Austrian news agency APA reported.

Klestil, 71, is due to end his second six-year term on Thursday and hand over the office in Vienna?s Hofburg palace to Social Democrat Heinz Fischer, elected in April. He may be best known for the exaggerated stony face he showed when he swore in the first government to include the far-right Freedom Party of Joerg Haider in February 2000. Klestil, a conservative like Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, was a critic of Schuessel?s decision to forge a coalition with Haider?s party that resulted in eight months of international diplomatic sanctions against Austria.

But Klestil in the end did not use his constitutional powers to dismiss the government. Instead, he swore in the conservative and far-right ministers with a stern and unhappy look. The head of state has mostly representative functions, but his voice counts on important issues and he can influence the formation of a government.

The president theoretically has wide-ranging powers under the constitution to pick the chancellor, who runs the day-to-day affairs of government, and to dismiss a government he does not like. But no Austrian president has ever fired a government and traditionally the chancellor is in effect named by the largest party after parliament elections.