Budapest  - Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom and his Slovakian counterpart Ivan Gasparovic plan to meet on December 6 amidst worsening relations between their countries.

A diplomatic row between Hungary and its neighbour to the north broke out earlier this month after a football match at which the police allegedly used excessive force and deliberately targeted Hungarian supporters.

The meeting to try and defuse the growing tension was announced by the presidents' offices on Tuesday, but by Thursday evening Hungary and Slovakia were still wrangling over where to hold the event.

The November 1 game between the home team at Dunajska Streda - where ethnic Hungarians make up around four-fifths of the population - and Slovan Bratislava had to be stopped for 15 minutes in the first half as police moved to suppress alleged unrest among home supporters.

Several dozen spectators were injured, and some had to be flown to hospital by helicopter.

The incident was followed by demonstrations in Hungary, including a far right rally where the Slovakian flag was burnt in front of the country's embassy in Budapest.

This came in the wake of a row over a ruling by the Slovakian government that only Slovakian place names be used in text books for Hungarian-language schools.

The small, mountainous country is home to over half a million Hungarian speakers, around 10 per cent of the population, who form the majority in many towns along its southern border.

In its initial announcement, Solyom's office said the summit would take place in the northern Hungarian town of Esztergom. However, the Slovakian presidential spokesman Marek Trubac told the Slovak news agency SITA on Thursday that this location was unacceptable to Gasparovic.

"Negotiations are under way between the Slovakian and the Hungarian presidents' offices over the details of the meeting between Laszlo Solyom and Ivan Gasparovic," a department head at the Hungarian president's office told the state news agency MTI on Thursday.

If and when a venue is agreed, the meeting would not be the first time Solyom and Gasparovic have tackled the issue of ethnic tension this year.

During a meeting in September of presidents of the Visegrad Four - Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia - Solyom was critical of the failure of high-level Slovakian politicians to distance themselves from anti-Hungarian remarks by the nationalist Jan Slota.

Slota is head of the Slovak National Party (SNS), part of the governing coalition. He is known for his anti-Hungarian rhetoric, and once described the Hungarian minority as a "cancer in the body of the Slovak nation."

In another attempt at diplomatic bridge-building, the Speaker of the Hungarian parliament Katalin Szili and her Slovakian counterpart Pavol Paska have scheduled a meeting for December 3 to discuss the increasing problems in Hungarian-Slovakian political relations.

Szili is particularly concerned about a recent Slovakian parliamentary resolution outlawing ethnic Hungarian MPs from participating in the cross-border Forum of Hungarian Representatives of the Carpathian Basin (KMKF).

The KMKF champions the rights of the sizeable Hungarian minorities in neighbouring countries, notably Romania and Serbia as well as Slovakia.

The KMKF is seen by the Slovakian government as an attempt by Hungary to interfere in its internal politics, a charge that Szili, who was instrumental in setting up the forum, vehemently denies.

"There are several examples in the world of ethnic kin and their mother country maintaining relations, and this is not an unacceptable solution," she said in an interview on Hungarian television earlier this month.

On Wednesday, the Hungarian justice minister Tibor Draskovics confirmed he had received a letter from the Slovakian Interior Minister Robert Kalinak and accepted an invitation to talks in Bratislava. Earlier this month, Draskovic had demanded an official explanation of the police actions at the Dunajska Streda football match.

Official accounts of the intervention by the Slovakian police have failed to satisfy Hungarian authorities.

In his letter to Draskovic on Tuesday, Kalinak restated Bratislava's position that the Slovakian police had acted within the law, and that their intervention was aimed at hooligans in general, not at Slovakian, Hungarian, Czech or any other supporters.

Draskovic expressed disappointment on Thursday over the contents of the letter. Speaking to the press while at a meeting of EU interior ministers in Brussels, he said his Slovakian counterpart had offered no new evidence or explanations for the actions of the Slovak police.

"I trust that we will receive such evidence, if not now, then later. We are thinking specifically of video recordings that the Slovakian police refused us in a letter written immediately after the event," Draskovic told MTI.

Kalinak was also in Brussels, but declined a meeting with his Hungarian counterpart citing official business, Draskovic said. "I have accepted the bilateral meeting suggested by my colleague, and it will take place in the near future," Draskovic added.

A meeting between the Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico and his Hungarian counterpart Ferenc Gyurcsany on 15 November was tense and inconclusive.

Each side blamed the other for a rise in ethnic tension between Slovakians and ethnic Hungarians living in Slovakia. Fico accused Hungary of "exporting fascism" to Slovakia, a reference to a proliferation of uniformed extreme right-ring groups.

Gyurcsany in turn accused Fico of not merely "flirting" with fascism but "embracing" it by forming a coalition with Slota's nationalist SNS party. (dpa)