RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 2, No. 164, 26 August 1998

MECIAR SAYS SLOVAK UNITY THREATENED. Prime Minister Vladimir
Meciar on 25 August said "those who believe that Slovakia's
ethnic Hungarians must integrate into Europe together with
Hungary are the advocates of Slovakia's partition," Hungarian
media reported. He alleged that Hungarian nationalists seek
to control Slovak politics and that "helped by certain
circles in Budapest," they aim at "the common integration of
Hungarians into Europe". Last week, Hungarian Prime Minister
Viktor Orban said that it would be in both countries'
interests if Slovakia joined the EU. Meciar also expressed
concern about the Slovak opposition's readiness to join
forces with Hungarian political forces in Slovakia to form an
alliance against him. MSZ

HUNGARIAN PREMIER SAYS HIS PARTY WAS SPIED ON. Orban on 25
August said that data on him and other leaders of the
Federation of Young Democrats-Hungarian Civic Party were
illegally collected before the May parliamentary elections.
He said members of his cabinet are facing "a well-constructed
slander campaign based on information illegally obtained
under the previous government." Former Prime Minister Gyula
Horn and other leading officials of his administration firmly
deny the charge, saying the secret services worked within the
law. Orban has ordered a government investigation into the
case. MSZ

TENSIONS WITHIN ETHNIC HUNGARIAN PARTY IN ROMANIA. The
chairman of the Hungarian Democratic Federation of Romania
(UDMR), Bela Marko, says the UDMR's honorary chairman, Bishop
Laszlo Tokes, must choose between his present honorary
position and that of leader of a "platform" within the UDMR,
the independent Pro TV reported on 25 August. Marko was
responding to Tokes' initiative to hold a "Szeklers' Forum"
in the Transylvanian town of Cernatul de Jos next month and
to his criticism of the UDMR's participation in the ruling
coalition. In an interview with the Budapest daily "Nepszava"
on 24 August, Marko said that if the government rejects the
initiative to divide the Babes-Bolyai university in Cluj into
a Romanian and a Hungarian university, another Hungarian-
language state university will have to be set up in the same
town. He accused the UDMR's coalition partners of
"politicking" and of "thinking more of the next elections
than of the next generation." MS

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