Austria pulls Chirac-Bush-Queen sex posters

Fri Dec 30, 2005 7:49 AM ET


VIENNA (Reuters) - Posters depicting Britain's Queen Elizabeth having sex with the U.S. and French presidents were removed from Vienna's streets on Friday to defuse an uproar that embarrassed Austria as it prepares to take on the EU presidency.

The images, splashed on scores of electronic rolling billboards, showed two naked female models wearing masks of President George W. Bush and the queen, and a male model with a President Jacques Chirac mask, posed as if engaged in a sex act.

A second poster, among 150 from around Europe and organized by Austrian curators with partial state funding, displayed the lower torso of a woman sprawled in knickers adorned with the European Union's circle-of-stars emblem.

Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel had appealed to the artists to pull the posters after opposition leaders and the media blasted them as pornographic, sexist and a blow to Austria's reputation on the eve of its EU presidency, starting on Sunday.

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