Budapest - The leader of the most vocal Hungarian extreme right party denied on Friday that his organisation had anything to do with a grenade attack that killed a Roma couple in southern Hungary on Tuesday.

Gabor Vona, speaking in front of Budapest's police headquarters, said that a campaign was being waged by politicians and the press to link the atrocity to the far right in Hungary.

The head of the nationalist Movement for a Better Hungary and a founding member of the controversial Hungarian Guard, a paramilitary group whose uniform reminds many of the wartime Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross, said his followers were law abiding citizens.

"Throwing grenades into the homes of children is not our practice," said Vona. He said the authorities should be treating the case as an example of "gypsy criminality," which "ruins the lives of millions of rural Hungarians, countless Gypsies included."

Early Wednesday morning representatives of Hungary's Roma minority were outraged when the police promptly ruled out any racist motive for the killing, instead blaming organised crime.

The same day, the minority rights ombudsman Erno Kallai, after a crisis meeting with Roma community leaders, called for the setting up of a police task force to deal with crimes against Roma citizens, particularly where a racist motive is suspected.

In response to the outcry, the national police announced on Thursday the setting up of a 50 strong national unit to deal specifically with crimes against the Roma minority.

So far this year there have been 14 attacks against Roma citizens involving petrol bombs and guns, and another two cases, including the most recent, where hand grenades were used.

Police commissioner Istvan Hazi said that so far no link had been established between the attacks other than the method of execution. A large cash reward has been offered for information leading to the perpetrators of Tuesday's attack and the gun slaying of a Roma man an woman in north west Hungary at the beginning of the month.

The Roma make up around seven per cent of Hungary's population of 10 million, and are amongst its poorest citizen's, often living ostracized in ghettos on the edge of towns and villages. The daily lives of many are blighted by crime and racketeering, especially the activities of unscrupulous loan sharks.

The Hungarian far right has been making increasingly outspoken attacks on the minority over the past two years, particularly with Jobbik and the Hungarian Guard holding rallies and marches to protest against what they term "Gypsy crime." (dpa)