|  State Secretary Gábor Szentiványi, the Foreign Ministry’s policy director, on Thursday officially summoned the Slovak Ambassador to Budapest in order to ask for an explanation in connection with the statements of Slovak political leaders in the past few days. Regarding the development of the two countries’ relations, the state secretary said the open invective on May 9 of the Slovak National Party (SNP) leader, Jan Slota, a participant in the governing coalition, when he spoke pejoratively of King Saint Stephen and objected to the use of a Hungarian-language text book in a Hungarian lesson in a Slovak school - which is recommended by the Education Ministry of the Republic of Slovakia - could neither be reconciled with previously mutually declared intentions nor the norms of European human rights, nor with Slovak law. The state secretary criticised Robert Fico, Slovakia’s head of government—who attended a joint press conference with Vladimir Meciar and Slota—for refusing to castigate Slota’s offensive and inciting words, as well as failing to distance himself from them. Mr Szentivanyi at the same time asked for an explanation in connection with the Slovak prime minister’s statement made in Liptószentmiklós (Liptovsky Mikulas), where he said: “…if Fidesz (the opposition Alliance of Young Democrats) wins the next Hungarian election, we must prepare for nationalism and extremist demonstrations against Slovakia”. The state secretary stressed that there are no extremist-inclined parties in the Hungarian parliament, and the represented political forces are active and respected members of the big European party groups - Fidesz is a member of the European People’s Party. Mr Szentiványi objected to something that has by now been experienced for some time; namely, double posturing on the part of the Slovak government, which, accentuates the need for co-operation only in rhetoric, and concurrently gives room to intentions generating conflict in Hungarian-Slovak relations and, in that context, in relations with ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia. A case in point regards Slovakia’s handling of the “Pilisszentkereszt case”, a local rather than a fundamentally ethnic type of issue, which Slovakia is attempting to put at the centre of Hungarian-Slovak relations, as well as deflecting to the international stage on which it is misrepresented, while solutions to general types of problems affecting the situation of the minority in Slovakia remain unsolved. The state secretary emphasised that the Hungarian government continues to hold the view that there is a need, in the interest of the two countries and the region, for the two nations to make a historic peace, and further steps, which would pave the way towards better infrastructural, economic and person-to-person relations between the two countries. Hungarian diplomacy wishes to work in the interest of these aims. After the meeting with the Ambassador, Gábor Szentiványi held a press conference and said it was unlikely that there would be a Hungarian-Slovak prime-ministerial meeting in the near future. “There should be an appropriate advancement of content in bilateral relations for such a prime ministerial meeting to have any point. Currently the content of advance-preparations has not yet reached such a stage for this to happen in the near future,” he said, adding that the developments of recent days had not helped advance the actualisation of a meeting. The state secretary confirmed a report by national news agency MTI that on Wednesday the Slovak foreign ministry summoned Hungary’s Ambassador to Bratislava in connection with a Tuesday parliamentary statement by Hungarian Foreign Minister Kinga Göncz. This subject was also brought up at the meeting on Thursday. The foreign minister had given a reply to a question by Hungarian Democratic Forum deputy Miklos Csapody and made a comparison between the Magyar Garda (“Hungarian Guard” - a far-right paramilitary organisation) and Jan Slota’s party.
(May 15, 2008) |