Budapest, August 22: Hungary and Slovakia stepped up a bitter war of words 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 yesterday.
Slovakia had repeatedly criticised 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 in 1968 by Soviet-led troops, among them Hungarians.
“This is a situation unheard of, inexcusable and unexplainable in the relationship of two allied countries,” Solyom said.
–PTI