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1 Slovak news compiled from wire services, U.S. press, RFE/RL, and other sources University of Pittsburgh, PA Slovak Studies Program, 1417 CL MARTIN VOTRUBA S L O V A K N E W S Monday Sunday, January 1994 Friday, 28 January Slovak Parliament Rejects Law on Bilingual Signs 1 Radio Free Europe to Continue Broadcasts to Slovakia 2 Writer s Society Slams Budapest over Ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia 3 Thursday, 27 January Slovaks Dissatisfied with Politics, Economy 5 Wednesday, 26 January Premier Mečiar and President Kováč Clash over Foreign Policy 6 Tuesday, 25 January Slovak Polish Accords Hit a Snag in Bratislava 6 President Kováč Says Visegrád Should Seek NATO Membership Together 7 Mystery Letter by Serb Ex-Premier Panić to Premier Mečiar Causes Stir 7 Domino Editor Hrico Charged with Defamation of State 8 Slovakia s Ethnic Hungarians Write the Council of Europe 8 Monday, 24 January Presidents Kováč, Wałęsa on Slovak Polish Relations 8 Friday, 28 January 1994 SLOVAK PARLIAMENT REJECTS LAW ON BILINGUAL SIGNS Bratislava In its 28 January session, the Slovak parliament rejected a law allowing for bilingual city names in areas with large ethnic minorities, TASR reports. Needing only a simple majority, the law failed by only 3 votes; of 132 representatives of the 150-member parliament present for the vote, 64 voted in favor, 35 voted against, and 33 abstained. The law has been supported by members of the Hungarian minority, and its passage was recommended by the Council of Europe when Slovakia joined the organization in June

2 24-30 January 1994, Slovak News Ivo Hlavacek, director of the international law and legislative section at the Foreign Ministry told TASR on 28 January that the CE recommendations are not obligatory or binding. RADIO FREE EUROPE TO CONTINUE BROADCASTS TO SLOVAKIA Bratislava Following 11 hours of talks on 28 January between Radio Free Europe (RFE) Deputy Director Gary Thatcher and Slovak Telecommunications (ST) Director Vladimír Ondrovič, ST agreed to cancel its earlier decision to terminate the contract with RFE by 31 January. Thatcher told reporters that RFE is willing to help resolve technical and legal questions, but he insisted that Slovakia abide by the contract signed by RFE and the former Czecho- Slovakia which allows RFE to use Slovak transmitters until the end of Bratislava Radio Free Europe has made a last-minute agreement with the telecomminucations ministry allowing the U.S. goverment- supported station to continue its broadcasts in Slovakia. Negotiations, between the station, which was to lose its permission to bradcast via state-owned transmitters on 31 January, and the ministry are still in progress. Attorneys for Radio Free Europe and a delegation from the radio s European headquarters in Munich arrived in Bratislava Friday to arrange an agreement with the ministry. Talks continued late into the evening. A statement released late Friday read that there are still numerous technical and procedural questions to be resolved but that broadcasts would not be interrupted. A series of misunderstandings nearly prevented the negotiations from taking place before they began. Radio Free Europe was invited to discuss the situation with officials at the Slovak Ministry of Transport, Telecommunications and Public Works on 20 January. But the day before the meeting radio officials were told that Minister Roman Hofbauer would be unable to meet with them either that week or the next. When radio representatives did not show in Bratislava last week, the local press rushed to print that the U.S. government- sponsored station snubbed the Slovak government. It is still not known what prompted Hofbauer to cancel the contract to use three state owned transmitters. The dispute began on 23 December 1993, when Hofbauer sent a letter to Munich stating that the radio contract was cancelled and that broadcasts must cease by 31 January The uproar that followed led several members of Parliament, including Christian Democrat leader and former prime minister, Ján Čarnogurský, to call for Hofbauer s dismissal.

3 24-30 January 1994, Slovak News 3 Prime minister Vladimír Mečiar has remained silent on the issue, although Hofbauer is believed to have the support of media and the ruling party, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia. (UPI) WRITER S SOCIETY SLAMS BUDAPEST OVER ETHNIC HUNGARIANS IN SLOVAKIA The following appeal was published on 28 January in Literárny týždenník, a weekly magazine of the Slovak Writer s Society (the organization s own English translation of Spolok slovenských spisovateľov one of several Slovak writer s organizations). It was headlined To the Intellectuals of Europe. Dear Colleagues, We have been following recent developments in Slovak Hungarian relations with great concern. Unfortunately, recent developments resemble the tragic times of the Munich Agreement and the Vienna Arbitrage at the end of the 1930s. A real possibility exists that the so-called minority dispute in this part of Europe will grow into a larger conflict. And European cultural public has only one-sided and false information about this conflict. In recent years, especially since the breakup of Czecho-Slovakia, some representatives of the ethnic Hungarian minority in Slovakia have engaged in a propaganda offensive aimed at clouding the true shape of this dispute which they instigate and provoke the dispute over the Treaty of Trianon. We feel, therefore, that it is our responsibility to present you with the real causes of the tension between the Slovak Republic and the Republic of Hungary with regard to minorities. The Slovak Republic, which was founded on 1 January 1993, has been recognized by over 100 nations of the world. Pope Paul VI declared the territory of Slovakia to be an independent Church province whose borders are identical with the national borders of the Slovak Republic. Despite this, Hungary refuses to acknowledge the unchangeability of the borders with its neighbors. After the founding of Czecho-Slovakia in 1918, over 400,000 ethnic Slovaks were living in Hungary, while in Slovakia there were about 600,000 ethnic Hungarians. The fate of these two ethnic groups is evident in the following figures: At present, only ten thousand people consider their ethnicity to be Slovak, while according to the 1991 census, over half a million people consider their ethnicity to be Hungarian in Slovakia. Ethnic minorities in Hungary, such as Slovak or German, are practically extinguished, but in Slovakia, the Hungarian minority has fully developed its identity, and also its cultural and political activities, schools and art are generously funded from the Slovak budget. Representatives of ethnic Hungarian political parties play an active role in the Slovak Parliament. How can one explain the vast difference between the vitality of the minorities on the one hand in Hungary and on the other hand in the surrounding countries, where there is a Hungarian minority especially in Slovakia?

4 24-30 January 1994, Slovak News 4 Accordingly, and on the basis of the quoted facts, we declare that there has been no modern democratic notion of human rights for minorities in recent and present-day Hungary, and the Hungarian public opinion is convinced that every person living in Hungary is automatically ethnically Hungarian, and in every territory where ethnic Hungarians live, such as in surrounding countries, there is a right to a Hungarian government. This kind of political program is the real cause of the disturbance in Central Europe. If not today, then tomorrow this will be the cause of a more serious conflict, and not simply ideological one. The romantic conception of the nation as a race, and the diaspora as a state that today s Hungary does not rule, appears quite openly in the activities of representatives of the Hungarian state and becomes more frequent in their claims. In thirteen ethnically mixed counties of Slovakia with 1,538,503 inhabitants, there are about 1,006,950 ethnic Slovaks and 531,553 ethnic Hungarians. Even if we consider only 11 ethnically mixed counties, the majority is still Slovak there 624,811 ethnic Slovaks and 506,845 ethnic Hungarians. So, in a typically mixed area, the representatives of the Hungarian minority call for the creation of an autonomous territory with its own administration and institutions. Tomorrow, they will call for the annexation of this area to Hungary. One cannot fail to see the strategy of the Hungarian political representatives in this. While the identity of ethnic minorities in Hungary is intentionally and violently suppressed, while the seeds of ethnic tolerance are planted in what is now a graveyard of former ethnic minorities in Hungary, the ethnic Hungarian minority, which lives in peaceful coexistence with its Slovak fellow citizens in Slovakia, is being misused for the expansionist goal of renewing the so-called Greater Hungary. The Hungarian policy does not want to give up the idea of the existence of Greater Hungary even nowadays, despite the unrealistic and dangerous nature of such a political project. The unethical intentions of Hungarian policy is evident in the fact that Nationality Law 77, which came into force on 1 January , is disputed in the Hungarian Parliament itself, since they contest its implementation as a policy of their own ethnic minorities, and yet the very law is supposed to be a model for the demands of the ethnic Hungarian minorities in surrounding countries. One example that sheds light on the whole problem is the recent protest by the chairman of the Union of Hungarian Germans, who accused the Hungarian Parliament of not enforcing its own constitution, when the Parliament declared it impossible for the Hungarian Parliament to accept representatives of ethnic minorities. The representatives of the Hungarian Germans, therefore, rightly ask what moral right Hungary has to interfere in the minorities of other countries if it doesn t even guarantee the most basic democratic living conditions for ethnic minorities in its own state. Hungary likes to present itself as a stabilizing factor in Central Europe. In reality, this is just a dangerous figment of imagination, because in its ethnic policies and its irrational

5 24-30 January 1994, Slovak News 5 concept of the nation, Hungary itself embodies the source of disquiet and latent conflict in Europe, which is, unfortunately, becoming even more apparent. A new source of dangerous tensions has arisen, resulting from the rise of nationalism, xenophobia, and national intolerance in Hungary, and which in turn causes the revival of the idea of Greater Hungary. This is the cause of the dangerous activities of the representatives of the ethnic Hungarian minorities, which are to be the means to implement this idea. The idea of Greater Hungary can only be implemented by the redrawing of the present national borders. We regard it as our moral duty to warn the intellectuals of Europe about the spiritual and political reality in Central Europe, about the two-faced policies of Hungary, where words and deeds are in conflict, where there are no guarantees for a peaceful solution to minority problems, and where antiquated notions of political morality still dominate, notions which have long vanished from European political culture. Signers: Ladislav Bartko, linguist; Ladislav Deák, historian; Ján Doruľa, linguist; Vilam Fábry, publicist; Andrej Ferko, writer; Michal Gáfrik, literature specialist; Vincent Hložník, academic painter; Gejza Horák, linguist; Ján Hučko, historian; Jozef Hvišč, literature specialist; Koloman Ivanička, natural scientist; Roman Kaliský, journalist; Vladimír Kompánek, academic painter; Rudolf Krajčovič, linguist; Eugen Kramár, architect; Cyril Kraus, literature specialist; Nora Krausová, literature specialist; Eva Kristínová, actress; Rudolf Krivoš, academic painter; Bohus Kuhlavý, academic painter; Dušan Kuzma, architect; Milan Laluha, academic painter; Ján Lazar, lawyer; Ján Lenčo, writer; Peter Liba, literature specialist; Viliam Marčok, literature specialist; Richard Marsina, historian; Ivan Masár, linguist; Július Mesároš, historian; Jozef Mlacek, linguist; Štefan Moravčík, writer; Ivan Plintovič, literature specialist; Ján Podolák, ethnographer; Milan Podrimavský, historian; Bello Polla, historian; Vincent Sedlák, historian; Zlata Solivajsová, writer; Vincent Šikula, writer; Ján Števcek, literature specialist; Pavol Števcek, literature specialist; Ladislav Ťažký, writer Ján Tužinský, writer Gustáv Valach, actor; Branislav Varsík, historian; Pavol Varsík, doctor; Imrich Vaško, literature specialist; Pavol Vongrej, literature specialist; Ján Zambor, writer; Ondrej Zimka, academic painter; Ernest Zmeták, academic painter. (Literárny týždenník) Thursday, 27 January 1994 SLOVAKS DISSATISFIED WITH POLITICS, ECONOMY Bratislava In a recent poll by the Institute of Sociology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, reported by TASR on 27 January, 85% of the population expressed discontent with the current economic situation, while 80% of Slovaks blamed domestic policy for their economic problems.

6 24-30 January 1994, Slovak News 6 Only 28% of respondents said they trust Parliament, while 40% said they had confidence in the cabinet. A high 73% said they trusted the institution of the president. Wednesday, 26 January 1994 PREMIER MEČIAR AND PRESIDENT KOVÁČ CLASH OVER FOREIGN POLICY Bratislava On 26 January Slovak Premier Vladimír Mečiar criticized President Michal Kováč for failing to coordinate foreign trips with the cabinet. Mečiar was particularly referring to Kováč s current visit to Poland and to the recent Visegrád summit held in Prague with U.S. President Bill Clinton. The premier s reaction came after František Mikloško of the opposition Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) told the parliament that it was a disgrace that Kováč was not accompanied to Poland by Economy Minister Ján Ducký or by Foreign Minister Jozef Moravčík, and that the prepared agreements were not signed. Warsaw Responding to Mečiar s criticism, Kováč told reporters in Warsaw that there was no disagreement between the Slovak cabinet and the Slovak president but said that his visit to Poland had not been sufficiently prepared because of obstacles in communications with the cabinet. Kováč expressed his annoyance that the cabinet had not approved his request that Ducký accompany him to Poland; the only cabinet member in the delegation was the environment minister. Tuesday, 25 January 1994 SLOVAK POLISH ACCORDS HIT A SNAG IN BRATISLAVA Warsaw Opening a three-day official visit to Warsaw on 25 January, Slovak President Michal Kováč said that good relations with Poland are one of the basic principles of Slovak foreign policy. He also endorsed regional cooperation. The Visegrád group is the best instrument to achieve NATO membership for Poland and Slovakia, Kováč said. Kováč thanked President Lech Wałęsa for his determined stance on the Partnership for Peace plan; Wałęsa awarded Kováč a Polish medal of honor. Bilateral accords on cross-border cooperation and environmental protection were not signed as scheduled, however, because of technical problems apparently arising on the Slovak side. Kováč also met with Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak and Cardinal Józef Glemp.

7 24-30 January 1994, Slovak News 7 The Slovak president is scheduled to meet on 26 January with parliamentary, business, and banking officials, PAP reports. PRESIDENT KOVÁČ SAYS VISEGRÁD SHOULD SEEK NATO MEMBERSHIP TOGETHER Warsaw Slovak President Michal Kováč said Tuesday that Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and his country should be united in seeking admission to NATO. Kováč, who is in Warsaw for a two-day official visit at the invitation of his Polish counterpart Lech Wałęsa, said such unity can be a guarantee of success. Slovakia is considered the least-ready of the four Visegrád countries that also include Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. It has occasionally been dropped from the list of early NATO members by prominent politicians, notably Britain s Prime Minister John Major. Despite the fact that every country will sign the Partnership for Peace plan separately, the existence of the group can be the best instrument to help everyone obtain NATO membership, Kováč said during a meeting with Wałęsa. Wałęsa said Poland and Slovakia share similar goals because regional cooperation and open frontiers will help bring about integration. (UPI) MYSTERY LETTER BY SERB EX-PREMIER PANIĆ TO PREMIER MEČIAR CAUSES STIR Bratislava On 25 January both former Yugoslav Premier Milan Panić and Slovak Premier Vladimír Mečiar described as fake a letter that was purportedly sent by Panić to Mečiar. TASR reports that the letter was first sent to the office of Slovak President Michal Kováč. According to TASR, the letter contains Panić s response to an alleged Slovak offer to sell arms in violation of the UN embargo on weapon supplies to states of the former Yugoslavia. The purported letter by Panić thanks Mečiar for an alleged offer to sell arms and ammunition to the rump Yugoslavia, but says Russia has made a better one. On 25 January the Slovak government discussed the letter, which is said to have been mailed from the Czech city of Plzeň. Government ministries met Slovak media representatives to deny the authenticity of the document. The government also instructed Foreign Minister Jozef Moravčík to meet Western ambassadors in Bratislava to brief them on the embarrassing provocation. Munich In a phone interview with Radio Free Europe from California, a spokesman for Panić said the letter is a forgery and an attempt to discredit Panić s peace efforts.

8 24-30 January 1994, Slovak News 8 DOMINO EDITOR HRICO CHARGED WITH DEFAMATION OF STATE Košice In an interview with ČTK on 25 January, Andrej Hrico, the editor-in-chief of Domino, a weekly published in Košice, said that a city prosecutor has charged him with defaming the Republic and its representatives. The charges leveled against Hrico stem from the fact that last summer his magazine published a letter by a reader, saying that as long as various opinion polls in Slovakia place at the top people, such as [Prime Minister Vladimír] Mečiar, [Democratic Left Party Chairman Peter] Weiss, [Culture Minister Dušan] Slobodník, [Speaker of Parliament Ivan] Gašparovič, [Slovak Ambassador to Prague Ivan] Mjartan, [Constitutional Court Chairman Milan] Číč, and the [two] Kováčes (presumably the Slovak President Michal Kováč and Deputy Prime Minister Roman Kováč), we cannot live well in Slovakia. The reader argued that these people are political wimps, scoundrels without characters, who harm Slovakia. Hrico told ČTK that last year he had been interrogated twice in connection with the letter, but that prosecutors originally intended to charge the author of the letter. However, they found out that the author did not sign the letter with his own name. An official at Košice s Prosecutor Office told ČTK that she would not comment on the case but said that the request to start the investigation was probably made by the office of the president. SLOVAKIA S ETHNIC HUNGARIANS WRITE THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE Bratislava Speaking at a press conference in Bratislava on 25 January, Pál Csáky, chairman of the caucus of the Hungarian Christian Democratic Movement in the Slovak Parliament, said that his party and the largest ethnic Hungarian party Coexistence have sent a letter to the Council of Europe (CE) in which they complain about what they see as Slovakia s failure to fulfill commitments that the country accepted when it became a CE member. As examples, Csáky cited alleged imperfections in a Slovak law allowing the use of foreign names, obstacles to the use of Hungarian names for traditionally Hungarian towns, and what he termed a discriminatory law on language. Monday, 24 January 1994 PRESIDENTS KOVÁČ, WAŁĘSA ON SLOVAK POLISH RELATIONS Before his 3-day official visit to Poland, which is to start on 25 January, Slovak President Michal Kováč told Polish Television that his visit will be of historical importance, because Slovakia, as a new independent state, has not had time to develop fully relations with other states.

9 24-30 January 1994, Slovak News 9 Kováč also said that regional cooperation needs new impulses but warned against the institutionalization of such cooperation. He also welcomed NATO s Partnership for Peace initiative, expressing hope that all four Visegrád countries (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic) will cooperate in the area of security. In an interview with Bratislava s Národná obroda on 24 January, Polish President Lech Wałęsa criticized the lack of solidarity and cooperation among Central European nations prior to the NATO s recent summit in Brussels. But he said that he and Kováč understand each other very well when it comes to regional solidarity. Urging more regional cooperation, Wałęsa said that certain organizational steps should be taken already now. Speaking to another Slovak daily, Sme, Wałęsa said that he is trying to do all that is possible to ensure that there are no borders between us in the year 2000.