NID: HUNGARY: TENSION WITH ORTHODOX NEIGHBORS GROWING

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe: A 30-Year Legacy
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06826747
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 26, 2019
• Document Release Date: December 10, 2019
• Publication Date: July 13, 1989

Approved for Release: 2019/10/29 C06826747
HUNGARY: Tension With Orthodox Neighbors Growing
Hungary's reform-oriented leaders find the attitudes of the orthodox
regimes in Romania and Czechoslovakia increasingly threatening and
are reassessing Hungarian national security interests.
Budapest believes Prague and Bucharest have jointly targeted their
security services against Hungary
Moreover
Romanian officials warned the Hungarians an armed
clash could not be excluded if Budapest continues to press Bucharest
about its treatment of the ethnic Hungarian minority in Romania.
Czechoslovakia and Romania stridently denounced the reburial of
Imre Nagy, the executed leader of the 1956 revolution, accusing
Budapest of counterrevolutionary tendencies. In reaction, Hungary
reportedly asked the West German Social Democratic Party to insert
into a bipartisan Bundestag resolution on Hungary a clause warning
against destabilization from abroad
Comment: Reformers in Budapest
apparently have concluded that the greatest threat to Hungary is
not from NATO but from Warsaw Pact allies threatened by its
liberalization and by its increasingly vocal defense of Hungarian
minorities abroad. Moscow has declined to involve itself in these
squabbles, and Hungary probably will turn more often to the West for
support. Romania's threat to use arms is probably a ploy to press
Budapest to case its oubli criticism; an armed clash is unlikely.
2
TCS 2861/89
13 July 1989
Approved for Release: 2019/10/29 C06826747