Hungary and Romania Square Off : Ethnic Dispute Leads to Rare Tiff Between East Bloc Neighbors

It is said here that as many as one-third of Hungary’s 10 million people have relatives living in the Transylvania region of neighboring Romania, a country whose leadership has never been especially tolerant of minorities.

But Hungarian concern for those relatives has mounted steadily after Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu announced plans to destroy as many as 7,000 rural villages, where about 1.7 million Hungarian-speaking Romanians live, under an agricultural modernization program.

Now, it has resulted in an open diplomatic tiff between the two socialist countries--a rare occurrence in the East Bloc, which sets great store by the maintenance of comradely relations.

“The annihilation of the values of the settlements doomed to destruction with reference to ‘socialist development’ would mean irreparable loss, not only to the Hungarian, German and other ethnic minorities but also to the Romanian people themselves,” said a strongly worded resolution adopted July 1 by the Hungarian Parliament.

Romania Criticized

The resolution, which climaxed several weeks of emotional back and forth on the issue, called on the Romanian regime to respect its human rights obligations and criticized its treatment of the Hungarian minority there.

In a highly unusual move, about 50,000 Hungarians had marched on the Romanian Embassy in Budapest on June 27--apparently with the full support of the Hungarian government--to protest Ceausescu’s plan. The demonstrations prompted the Romanian government to retaliate by closing a Hungarian consulate in the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca. Three Hungarian diplomats--members of the consulate staff--were sent home.

And, after the Hungarian resolution was adopted, the Romanians countered by turning back Hungarian tour buses at the Transylvanian border and conducting a general slowdown by customs officers, leading to six-hour traffic jams at border crossing points.

Now, officials say, there is concern that further demonstrations may exacerbate the already bitter dispute.

But there are indications, according to both these officials and diplomats, that the Hungarians believe it is time to press for a more traditional diplomatic resolution of this sore point between the two countries.

‘Waiting for Answers’

“We are waiting for answers,” one staff member of the Hungarian Communist Party’s Central Committee said. “We put forward some proposals for discussion. I think now it is high time for an end to demonstrations and to move on to something else.”

The official, who asked not to be identified, said the demonstrations served to “express public concern.” But he said he doubted that such pressure would persuade Ceausescu, who has declared that cities of 300,000 are the optimum size for his country, to renounce his policy to consolidate rural villages into newly built towns. The first villages face relocation as early as this fall.

“I think both the government and the populist groups which organized the demonstrations realized that Romania has sovereignty here and . . . can do what it wants,” one Western diplomat said. “They are worried, in short, about reprisals.”

Domestic Interests Served

Observers note that the Hungarian government’s obvious support of the protests served domestic political interests of the government of Premier Karoly Grosz, installed seven weeks ago. Grosz is seeking to forge a link to the liberal-populist opposition groups that continue to press for further political reform in Hungary, already the most liberal regime in the East Bloc.

“This is an emotional issue, and one that all the opposition groups can get behind,” the diplomat said. “Even the more radical opposition groups have to support it. So, for the government it is a way of co-opting them, of establishing some common ground.”

Grosz, 56, who inherited the nation’s Communist Party leadership from 76-year-old Janos Kadar, indicated early this month that he was hoping for a meeting with Ceausescu to resolve the issue. Direct talks, he said, are “a political necessity and a moral obligation.”

Ceausescu, 70, who has become increasingly isolated in recent years, had called earlier for a joint meeting to “put an end to the negative evolution” of Hungarian-Romanian relations.

“It would be no good for the two peoples, for Europe, for the international detente process,” Grosz answered, “that the ties between the two countries should become drastically worsened.”