Hungary and Slovakia stepped up a bitter war of words on Friday as Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom was forced to cancel a private visit after Bratislava said it would bar him from entering.
Standing half-way across a bridge over the Danube, on the border between the two countries, Solyom told reporters he would not travel to Slovakia.
“We have received the note of the Slovakian ministry of foreign affairs in which they forbid me personally entering Slovakia until midnight,” he said.
Slovakia had repeatedly criticized Solyom’s planned trip to a border town because it had been due to take place on the very day the country remembers an invasion by Soviet-led troops, among them Hungarians.
Aug. 21 is remembered in Slovakia as the day in 1968 when what was then Czechoslovakia was occupied by Warsaw Pact troops to crush the “Prague Spring” reform drive by the country’s communist leadership.
“This is a situation unheard of, inexcusable and unexplainable in the relationship of two allied countries,” Solyom said. “It is especially so because of the reasoning behind the ban: that my presence would mean a security threat.”
Solyom had been due to attend the unveiling of a statue of Stephen, a medieval king of Hungary, in the town of Komarno, just over the border.
The Hungarian town of Komarom lies on the southern bank of the River Danube, which marks the two countries’ border.
Hungarians make up 10 percent of Slovakia’s population of 5.4 million people, mostly living along the frontier.
“Komarno lies in Slovakia’s territory, it’s not a Hungarian town,” Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico told reporters earlier on Friday.
Solyom would be welcome at any other time, he said, but coming on Aug. 21 was “mere provocation.”
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Balazs described the ban as “unprecedented and unacceptable” and said Budapest would raise the matter with the EU.
“The president’s visit had been carefully planned, together with the Slovakian foreign ministry,” he said on Hungarian public TV.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
At a calligraphy class in Hanoi, Hoang Thi Thanh Huyen slides her brush across the page to form the letters and tonal marks of Vietnam’s unique modern script, in part a legacy of French colonial rule. The history of romanized Vietnamese, or Quoc Ngu, links the arrival of the first Christian missionaries, colonization by the French and the rise to power of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It is now reflected in the country’s “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers. A month after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited,
RSS