Slovak premier distances himself from Hungarian Guard

"We thank US Congress Foreign Committee chairman Tom Lantos for writing a letter to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico," House Foreign Committee chairman Zsolt Németh said after his delegation met with Lantos in Washington. The letter expressed concern about the treatment of Hungarian minorities in Slovakia.

"If I have to distance myself from anything then it would be the Magyar Gárda," Fico said in response to Lantos' letter. "Slovakia's national minority policy is excellent in the EU, thus it is unfair to criticise it," he added.

Slovak Brotherhood spokesman Michal Lassák told Slovak daily Sme that "we do not know whether the Magyar Gárda poses an actual threat to Slovakia or whether it is an organisation that wants to protect its own country against the spread of liberalism, bolshevism and Zionism. We have sympathy for the Magyar Gárda if it is actually nationalistic." The Slovak Brotherhood is closely connected to the Slovak National Party, which is a junior member of the ruling coalition in Slovakia, Magyar Nemzet notes.

The above story is just one of more than two dozen published today by Hungary Around the Clock, the most comprehensive source of daily English-language news about Hungary. For a free trial of HATC, click here. Hungarian news sources include Népszabadság; Magyar Hírlap; Világgazdaság; Napi Gazdaság; Magyar Nemzet; Népszava; Kossuth Rádió news and Hungarian television's nightly news broadcast.

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