OMRI DAILY DIGEST
No. 12, 17 January 1996

SLOVAK PRIME MINISTER ACCEPTS NATIONALISTS' DEMANDS. Vladimir Meciar on
16 January announced that the conditions set by the Slovak National
Party (SNS) concerning the ratification of the Slovak-Hungarian treaty
(see OMRI Daily Digest, 16 January) have been accepted. "The coalition
problem is resolved," he said. According to Meciar, the SNS's demands
will be addressed at one of the cabinet's upcoming sessions, Narodna
obroda reported. In other news, government spokeswoman Ludmila Bulakova
on 16 January said that Meciar will not meet with German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl during a trip to Bonn this weekend to attend a Bertelsmann
Foundation conference. Bulakova said Meciar will deliver two speeches at
the conference and has no time left to meet with Kohl, TASR reported.
Meciar is interested in making an official visit to Germany, rather than
having "just a short appointment" during a conference, she stressed. --
Sharon Fisher

FORMER HUNGARIAN PREMIER LEAVES NOTES BEHIND. The late Communist Party
chief and Prime Minister Karoly Grosz left behind hundreds of pages of
documents on the change of regime and politicians instrumental in
bringing it about, Nepszabadsag reported on 16 January. Grosz, who died
last week, was apparently prompted by the British government to sum up
his views in writing about the transformation. He reportedly also wrote
about his last conversations with Communist Party head Janos Kadar. In a
related development, Nepszava published an interview with Grosz on 11
January -- conducted in 1991 on condition that it be published only
after his death -- in which he harshly criticizes some of Hungary's
former or current politicians, including Prime Minister Gyula Horn and
former Premier Miklos Nemeth. -- Zsofia Szilagyi

[As of 12:00 CET]

Compiled by Jan Cleave