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Hungarian prime minister digs in after Budapest riots leave 150 injured

Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany refused to resign yesterday after 150 people were injured in street riots sparked by his admission to lying about the state of the economy to win re-election.

In the most violent protests to hit Budapest since the fall of communism in 1989, demonstrators went on the rampage late on Monday, storming the state television headquarters and demanding the socialist prime minister's ouster.

A defiant Gyurcsany ruled out any prospect of his stepping down and said he had told police "to use all means to restore order" in the capital.

"Taking to the streets is not a solution, but a source of conflict and crisis," he said. "Our duty is to ease this conflict and prevent a crisis."

Police had used tear-gas and water cannons to break up the protests, which flared when some 3,000 right-wing demonstrators took to the city's Szabadsag Square.

The protestors briefly occupied the television building to press calls for the prime minister to resign after public radio broadcast over the weekend a tape-recording of a closed-door discussion between Gyurcsany and his deputies in May.

In the recording, Gyurcsany candidly admitted the government had accomplished nothing but "rubbish" and "lied all along for the past 18 months -- two years" about the increasingly dire state of the national economy and secret plans to introduce an austerity program after elections in April.
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