Austrian right-winger Joerg Haider raised the stakes in a decades-old struggle over road signs in German and Slovenian on Wednesday, moving a disputed sign by a few metres to bypass a court ruling, Reuters reported. In a carefully staged media event in the 4,200-people town of Bleiburg, Haider helped workers tear down German-language town signs as he had been ordered by Austria's highest court -- only to erect them again a few metres away. Haider's southern region of Carinthia borders the former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia, once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and a minority of around 20,000 still speaks Slovenian. Austria's constitutional court ordered Haider in December to erect signs also showing Bleiburg's Slovenian name Pliberk. But Haider said the court was playing politics and he would obey the order only formally and just displace the signs. "We are creating the proper legal status again," Haider told around 40 journalists at the scene, who included television teams from Slovenia. "The constitutional court's attempt to force double-language signs upon us has failed." --More 21 25 Local Time 18 25 GMT
