Budapest / Hungary (RNN Correspondent) 09.02.1998

After an uproar that spotlighted accusations of ethnic prejudice, the Hungarian town of Szekesfehervar promised on Thursday to drop its attempt to settle homeless Roma in nearby villages.

The argument has been on the front pages of Hungarian newspapers every day for weeks, with Szekesfehervar, an industrial boomtown of about 100,000 people 50 km (30 miles) south of Budapest battling its small rural neighbours over where the Roma would live.

Mayor Istvan Nagy, meeting village leaders to settle the dispute, agreed that Szekesfehervar would keep Roma families displaced from run-down Radio Street in emergency accommodation until it finds them permanent flats in the town.

‘‘I hope very much that by March or April I will find flats for them,’’ Nagy told RNN after the meeting.

He said that Roma organisations had been using the dispute to call attention to the difficulties of Hungary’s largest ethnic minority and the country needed a national solution to the problem. Most of Hungary’s Roma live in poverty. Estimates of their numb ers range from 500,000 to almost a million in the country of 10 million people.

The Szekesfehervar quarrel dates back two year to when the town decided the demolish the homes of 13 poor Roma families and bought properties to re-house them in villages up to 30 km (20 miles) away. Villagers protested. Some threw rocks through windows an d put up banners telling the gypsies to go back to Radio Street.

Roma groups blamed the hostile reaction on anti-gypsy prejudice. The villagers denied it, saying they faced a general problem with poverty and did not need more poor people moving in.