March 17th, 2009

Fidesz calls Romanian move against Sólyom “outrageous provocation”

By

The main opposition Fidesz party called an “outrageous provocation” Romania’s refusal of a landing permit for the Hungarian President’s plane, MP Zsolt Nemeth told reporters on Monday.

Nemeth, who is also chair of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, added that his party expected the Hungarian foreign minister to voice a “firm protest” over the issue.

“This is unprecedented and evokes communist times,” Nemeth said.

On Saturday, Foreign Minister Kinga Goncz called it an “unfriendly move” from the Romanian authorities to deny President Laszlo Solyom’s plane permission to land in Transylvania, home to a large ethnic Hungarian community, where the president was scheduled to attend a celebration marking the anniversary of Hungary’s 1848 revolution.

Topics
Share
Comments
The All Hungary Media Group is firmly committed to freedom of expression and therefore applies a mostly "hands off" approach to comment moderation. Comments left by readers represent their own views and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of the staff, editors or owner of the All Hungary Media Group, who nonetheless reserve the right to remove comments that are off-topic or which moderators consider to constitute "hate speech." Also note that in order to prevent spam we generally close entries off to comments several days after publication.

3 Comments

  1. Doktor Ki (v.12) says:
    March 18, 2009 at 9:06 am

    Can’t Goncz and this FIDESz chappy just accept that the translation was fucked up. The Romanians acted a little uptightly, but not what you call hostile or unfriendly.
    Just accept it was a cock-up, have a laugh about it, sack the translator and get on with more important things (like trying to manage the economy).
    Hungary’s worst enemy? It’s own political parties.

  2. Simson says:
    March 18, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    It was very unfriendly action from Romanians.
    I hope it won’t have a devastating effect on the Hungarian-Romanian bilateral relations regarding ethnic Hungarian minority beyond the border.
    I hope this case won’t spark off an unnecessary power struggle between Hungary and Romania.

  3. IQ 86 says:
    March 20, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    I can picture it now. President Putin flying into Donetsk in military jet to celebrate the Russian national day with ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine.