RFE/RL NEWSLINE 
Vol. 1, No. 120, 18 September 1997

SLOVAKIA ACCUSES HUNGARY OF ANTI-SLOVAK CAMPAIGN. The
Slovak government has accused Hungary of conducting a campaign to
discredit Slovakia. The Slovak Foreign Ministry on 17 September
issued a statement saying it had summoned Hungarian ambassador
to Bratislava Jeno Boros to hand him a note protesting the "broad and
intensive discrediting campaign" against Slovakia. A meeting
between Slovak Foreign Minister Zdenka Kramplova and her
Hungarian counterpart, Laszlo Kovacs, scheduled for 20 September
has been canceled. Relations between the two countries deteriorated
sharply after Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Horn accused his
Slovak counterpart, Vladimir Meciar, of having proposed Slovakia's
600,000-strong Hungarian minority return to Hungary. Meciar says
he merely noted that those ethnic Hungarians who want to return to
Hungary should be allowed to do so.

HUNGARY RESPONDS TO SLOVAK CRITICISM. The Hungarian Foreign
Ministry on 17 September said it accepts "with regret" Bratislava's
decision to cancel the planned meeting of the two countries' foreign
ministers. The ministry said the arguments listed in the diplomatic
note were "untrue and absurd." Hungarian Foreign Minister Laszlo
Kovacs said as far as Hungary is concerned, the invitation to
Kramplova still stands. He said Budapest sees no reason to make a
unilateral gesture, still less to apologize, as demanded in the
diplomatic note. The same day, the Slovak Foreign Minister
Kramplova rejected the statement by the Hungarian parliament that
the Slovak government was suffering from an "inferiority complex."

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