SLOVAKIA: A senior Slovak official has called for top-level talks with Budapest to ease tensions stoked by a series of attacks on ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia.
Relations between the neighbouring EU states have cooled since the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS) joined the coalition of new prime minister Robert Fico, and hit a recent low after attacks on members of Slovakia's large Hungarian minority.
In the latest assault, two men beat a young woman whom they heard speaking Hungarian in the city of Nitra, and wrote on her blouse: "Hungarians, go back to the other side of the Danube", in reference to the river that separates the countries.
Other attacks have occurred, and bars and restaurants along the Slovak side of the border have reported gangs of young men taunting Hungarian-speaking customers.
Hungarian prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany has condemned the attacks and urged Mr Fico to act quickly to prevent any repeat, while the authorities in Bratislava insist they are doing everything possible to crush extremism.
But Slovakia has also expressed anger at Budapest's "overreaction" to the assaults, suggesting that Hungary wants to make an international issue out of the incidents to discredit Mr Fico's government.
"Let's sit down, government and parliament leaders and presidents, for discussions," said Slovakia's deputy prime minister, Dusan Caplovic.
"It is necessary to deal with the past by means of a common declaration which will destroy the walls between us," he said.
Slovakia became a fully independent country only in 1993, when it parted peacefully from its Czech neighbours.
Before 1918, when Czechoslovakia was carved out of a swathe of Austro-Hungarian territory, Slovaks had lived since the 10th century under various forms of rule from Hungary.
About 10 per cent of Slovakia's five million residents are ethnic Hungarians, and they are a frequent target for verbal attacks by SNS leader Jan Slota, who has called them a "cancer on the body of the nation", expressed regret that they were not expelled after the second World War, and threatened to drive Slovak tanks through Budapest.
Mr Slota's party won more than 11 per cent of the vote in June's elections, taking 20 seats in parliament and three ministerial posts in Mr Fico's coalition government.
The SNS often accuses Slovakia's Hungarian Coalition party of conspiring with Budapest to undermine the state, and foreign minister Jan Kubis struck a similar note this week.
"There is a campaign aimed at discrediting Slovakia, the Slovak government and the political forces behind the government," Mr Kubis said, accusing ethnic Hungarian leaders of holding "consultations about this campaign and its preparation" in Budapest.