21.   Both countries have stumbled over the extent of rights to grant their large Hungarian minorities.

22.   But Iliescu said such charges were unfounded, and that the law would enable young members of the Hungarian minority to find jobs anywhere in the country.

23.   But the move could exacerbate relations not only between the Romanian majority and the Hungarian minority but also between Romania and the Hungarian government in Budapest.

24.   Commeraderie of the two defense minister contrasted with the strained political relations between the two countries over the sizeable Hungarian minority in Romania.

25.   For decades, relations between Romania and Hungary have been burdened by differences over the treatment of the ethnic Hungarian minority.

26.   For example, the opposition Party of the Hungarian Coalition focuses primarily on issues of the Hungarian minority, which are often opposed by mainstream Slovaks.

27.   He has since banned beggars and foreign flags, notably flags of the large ethnic Hungarian minority.

28.   Hungary and Slovakia tried Thursday to salvage an apparently doomed agreement on Hungarian minority rights in order to keep alive hopes for swift integration with western Europe.

29.   Hungarian Foreign Minister Laszlo Kovacs met his Romanian counterpart Teodor Melescanu Thursday to try to bridge differences over the status of the Hungarian minority in Romania.

30.   Hungary is at loggerheads with Slovakia and its southern neighbor Romania about the fate of sizeable ethnic Hungarian minorities in these countries.