Bratislava  - Former premier Vladimir Meciar, whose rule brought Slovakia to isolation in 1990s, has become the first politician to use a disputed new media law, Sme daily said Saturday.

Meciar asked the newspaper to run a lengthy correction to an opinion piece published on June 2, a day after the controversial law came to force.

The piece commented on Meciar party's efforts to gain control of country's intelligence service.

"It illustrates the aim of the press law... the politicians want to use the press law as a tool that will give them access to the media and intimidate journalists to self-censorship," said Sme's deputy editor-in-chief Lukas Fila.

Publishers, journalists and human rights groups have complained that the law gives readers excessive rights to reply and correct published articles.

It obliges newsrooms to run corrections and replies in their full on "equivalent" space, a development publishers see as an infringement on editorial independence.

The original bill also planned penalties for stories approving of wars or drugs, but the government dropped that provision.

The right-wing opposition failed to force Prime Minister Robert Fico to make further changes by boycotting ratification of the European Union's reform treaty, aimed at overhauling institutions of the enlarged 27-member bloc.

Fico's leftist ruling coalition nevertheless approved the media bill in April. Ethnic Hungarians subsequently broke ranks with the opposition and helped Fico ratify the Lisbon Treaty in parliament.

Opponents of the law, which has been criticized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), now plan to contest it in the courts.

Meciar, 65, ranks among Slovakia's most controversial post- communist politicians.

A prime minister between 1994 and 1998, his authoritarian rule steered the central European country away from joining the European Union and towards Russia.

While his populist and nationalist party is currently a junior partner in Fico's government, Meciar was not offered a post in the cabinet.

Meciar's letter was signed by his party acronym LS-HZDS and was not printed with a party letterhead. "We initially thought it was a joke," Fila said.

Party spokeswoman Monika Zakariasova confirmed to Sme that the letter was sent "directly by the chairman's assistant".

The newspaper decided not to publish the letter as a correction to the page-20 commentary but turned it into a front-page story on what it said was Meciar's attempt to abuse the new law. (dpa)