RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE  17 February 2000

CYANIDE POLLUTION BACK TO ROMANIA. The pollution caused by
the spill into a tributary of the Tisa River has now returned
to Romania. Romanian Radio reported on 17  February that
water supplies in Drobeta Turnu Severin, on the banks of the
River Danube, were halted the previous day, and fishing in
the river has been prohibited. Cyanide concentration in the
waters of the Danube was some 20 times higher than normal.
Meanwhile, police in Baia Mare launched a criminal
investigation into the Aurul company, which caused the spill.
Foreign Minister Petre Roman, responding to Hungarian Premier
Viktor Orban's statement one day earlier (see "RFE/RL
Newsline," 16 February 2000), said he "fails to comprehend
the logic behind suing Romania before the joint experts'
commission has finalized its investigation." He appealed to
Budapest "not to attempt to politicize the issue." MS

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RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE  18 February 2000

...WHILE RULING COALITION 'REGRETS' THAT DECISION. Responding
to Schuster's decision, Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda
called on Slovaks not to take part in the plebiscite. He said
that "participation in the referendum is a road to the past.
Ignoring it is the path to the future." Dzurinda also said
that Schuster's decision amounted to an "unfortunate going
along with the HZDS." Hungarian Coalition Party Chairman Bela
Bugar similarly called on the party's supporters to boycott
the referendum. Meanwhile, a poll conducted by the Slovak
Statistical Office's UVVM Institute shows that if a general
election were held now, the HZDS would win with 24.8 percent
of the vote, CTK reported. MS

EU COMMISSIONER TOURS HUNGARY, ROMANIA TO ASSESS DAMAGE. EU
Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom on 17 February
visited the Romanian town of Baia Mare and the Hungarian city
of Szolnok to assess the damage caused by the cyanide spill
in the Szamos and Tisza Rivers. Wallstrom was joined by the
Hungarian and Romanian Environment Ministers, Pal Pepo and
Romica Tomescu. At a news conference in Szolnok, she said the
EU will not get involved in efforts by individual countries
to receive compensation but added that "whoever is
responsible for the pollution should pay. " She also
criticized the Australian Esmeralda company, which co-owns
the mine that caused the spill, saying the company could face
stiff penalties. MSZ

...WHILE AUSTRALIAN FIRM DENIES RESPONSIBILITY. Esmeralda
chairman Brett Montgomery said in a 17 February statement
that "quite clearly there has been contamination of parts of
the river system of the region, but there is no evidence to
confirm that the contamination and the damage said to have
been caused" are a result of incident. The World Wildlife
Fund said that hundreds of tons of dead fish have already
been taken from the Tisza and Danube rivers. Petre Marinescu,
Deputy Director of the Romanian Water Authority said,
however, that the death of flora and fauna in the two rivers
was not caused by cyanide but by chemicals released into
waters to neutralize the cyanide. Hungarian authorities
denied that neutralizing agents were thrown in Hungarian
rivers. Meanwhile, Romanian Ambassador to Hungary Petru
Cordos said on 17 February that jars of fish were thrown at
the embassy building, smashing several windows. He added that
similar incidents took place last week. MSZ

THE RETURN OF POLITICAL ANTI-SEMITISM

by Michael J. Jordan

	When a leading Hungarian politician spices his speech
with ominous references to "cosmopolitans" and "Communist
Jews"--as did Deputy Prime Minister Laszlo Kover on 29
January--he cannot expect that it will be taken lightly. In
Hungary, similar rhetoric half a century ago spurred a
genocide that killed more than half a million Hungarian Jews.
	But speeches like Kover's and various anti-Jewish
provocations have become increasingly common in Hungary over
the past year, causing unease among Central Europe's largest
Jewish community.
	Jewish observers say the increasing use of "political
anti-Semitism" is more than a hate-mongering ploy. Instead,
they contend it is a cynical strategy by Hungary's crafty
prime minister, Viktor Orban, and his advisers. Orban, 36,
seems intent on carving out a future for himself as the "Man
of the Right." While no one suggests that he is an anti-
Semite, some of his allies are skillfully employing
nationalist Christian-conservative symbols and Holocaust
revisionism.
	"These are deeply coded messages to the far right to
show that this is where their hearts beat," says writer
Miklos Haraszti, an ex-dissident and former liberal
parliamentary deputy. "They want these voters, even if they
lose some sympathy from moderates and earn contempt from
journalists and liberal opinion-makers."
	Since last summer, a number of Jewish-related issues
have made headlines, even though the country's 100,000 or so
Jews constitute just 1 percent of the population. First came
a government attempt--dropped after Jewish experts protested-
-to rewrite the text of the Hungarian exhibit at Auschwitz,
which was installed in 1965. The new version would have
shifted all blame for the Hungarian Holocaust onto Germany,
which occupied the country in March 1944, and made no mention
of Hungary's role.
	Then, in the fall, officials unveiled a plaque
commemorating the Hungarian gendarmerie while ignoring the
fact that it was these same police who, for seven weeks in
the spring of 1944, enthusiastically carried out Nazi orders
to round up and deport 437,000 Jews from the Hungarian
countryside.
	Hungarian Jews says these moves are part of an
orchestrated campaign to whitewash Hungary's past. But Maria
Schmidt, a key adviser to Orban and frequently criticized as
one of Hungary's leading revisionists, argues that after four
decades of Communism, in which historical documentation was
indeed ideologically skewed, there is a need to relate
history from a new perspective.
	"For 40 years they were lying about everything," Schmidt
told RFE/RL. "I'm glad that now there's competition in the
telling of history, because no one should have a privileged
position or monopoly. We all live in this country; we all
have our own history and our own point of view."
	Schmidt says she backs the unrestricted publication and
distribution of "Mein Kampf," "The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion," and other anti-Semitic tracts now available in new
Hungarian-language editions in many Budapest bookstores.
	More worrying for Hungarian Jews, according to Haraszti,
is that Orban appears to welcome the parliamentary support of
Istvan Csurka and his far-right Hungarian Justice and Life
Party (MIEP). Csurka was kicked out of the first post-
Communist ruling party, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, in
1993 for his extremist views. He returned to the parliament
in July 1998, when MIEP squeaked past the 5 percent
threshold, winning 14 seats out of 386.
	Csurka and his minions are notorious for conspiratorial
talk about "alien elements" and "liberal traitors." They also
have questioned the "disproportionate" number of Jews in the
media, in leading symphony orchestras, and in the delegation
of Hungarian authors to last year's Frankfurt Book Fair.
Moreover, Csurka is virtually the only Central European
politician to hail the rise of Joerg Haider in Austrian
politics.
	Orban, meanwhile, remains silent and above the fray.
After all, Hungary is clamoring for full integration into the
West. Analysts suspect that Orban is searching for the fine
line between how far to the right Hungarian society is
willing to move and how much Hungary's Western partners are
willing to tolerate. 	Compared with some of its neighbors
(Yugoslavia, Croatia, Romania, and Ukraine), Hungary
currently seems an oasis of economic and political stability.
So the West does not trouble itself with Hungarian domestic
politics. But international pressure--such as a scathing
report by the Anti-Defamation League last December--may force
Orban to change his ways.
	The same month as the report appeared, the government
announced it will fund a Holocaust museum and documentation
center. And on 18 January, in a ceremony to commemorate the
Soviet liberation of the Budapest ghetto, Education Minister
Zoltan Pokorni suggested that Hungary have an annual
Holocaust remembrance day.
	Hungarian Jews, however, tend to view these gestures as
half-hearted attempts at damage control and public relations.
Many Jews were among the several thousand Hungarians who
attended an anti-fascist demonstration in Budapest on 13
February. "You won't be any better off by hiding or avoiding
conflict; to them you'll still be the 'budos zsido' [stinking
Jew]," says Balint Molnar, 25, who attended the rally and who
has just completed a degree in international relations at the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "My grandfather, an 84-year-
old Holocaust survivor, curses and swears and sometimes spits
at the television set. But I think we should deal with anti-
Semitism more dynamically. We should confront these people
and make more noise about it."

The author is a freelance journalist based in Budapest
].

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                     All rights reserved.
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