VIENNA, Oct 11, 2008 (AFP) - Outspoken Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider, who sparked international outrage with comments praising Nazi policies, died Saturday when his car veered off the road.

Haider, 58, suffered serious head and chest injuries when his car flipped over several times and died while en route to hospital, police said.

Tributes were paid by Austrian politicians of all sides despite his notoriety. Haider grabbed international attention after his anti-immigration, anti-EU party won more than a quarter of the vote in a 1999 general election and became part of the government.

The governor of Carinthia province and leader of the Alliance for Austria's Future (BZOe) party was driving his official car on a road south of the provincial capital, Klagenfurt, when the accident happened.

He had just overtaken another vehicle when his car came off the road for unknown reasons, according to police quoted by the APA news agency.

Haider was to have attended a family celebration Saturday for his mother's 90th birthday.

'For us this is the end of the world,' BZOe deputy leader Stefan Petzner said.

Austria's President Heinz Fischer called Haider a 'politician of great talent' who had 'aroused enthusiasm but also strong criticism.'

Werner Faymann, the Social Democratic leader who is expected to form a new government after elections last month, called Haider 'an exceptional politician.'

Former chancellor Wolfgang Schussel said Haider 'knew how to listen and had a connection with the people.'

Greens leader Eva Glawischnig, whose party strongly opposed Haider, spoke of the 'tragic death of one of the most outstanding and controversial Austrian political figures of recent decades.'

Abroad he will be best remembered for comments which appeared to pay tribute to Adolf Hitler's Nazis.

In 1991 had to give up his post as governor of Carinthia after praising the Third Reich's employment policies. He was elected again but in 1995 said the feared Waffen-SS should be 'honoured.' New criticism erupted when he told the Austrian parliament that Nazi concentration camps were just 'disciplinary camps.'

He had also demanded a referendum on whether Austria should stay in the European Union.

In last month's election, Haider had been part of a new rebirth of the Austrian far-right against the country's mainstream Social Democrat and conservative parties.

His Alliance for Austria's Future scored 10.7 percent of the vote, making it the fourth biggest party behind the other far-right group, the Freedom Party (FPOe), which he previously led, on 17.5 percent.

Haider summed up his political strategy in his final interview with the Kleine Zeitung newspaper which was published Saturday: 'We have changed things a lot in Carinthia and we will do so in Austria as well. I don't even need to be chancellor to do that.'

Haider had headed the Alliance for Austria's Future since August.

Media-savvy, he was rarely out of the limelight, offering recently to mediate hostage crises in North Africa with his friend Seif al-Islam, son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, or forcibly removing bilingual street signs in Carinthia, which has a strong Slovenian minority.

The son of a bootmaker with avowed Nazi sympathies, Haider became involved in the extreme right in his early 20s.

After graduating with a law degree from Vienna University, he made Carinthia his stronghold, quickly rose through the ranks of the Freedom Party and took over its leadership in 1986.

Austria endured several months of EU sanctions after his party became part of the ruling coalition in 1999.

The Freedom Party did well again in the 2004 election but Haider had to give up the party leadership and any chance of a ministerial post in return for it becoming part of the ruling coalition.

Haider was subsequently forced out in a battle over policy with the 'ultra' wing who had originally brought him to power.

In 2005, he left and was replaced by Heinz Christian Strache, current Freedom Party leader, while Haider went off to set up a new populist party.