Budapest - Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom met his Slovak counterpart Ivan Gasparovic on Saturday in the latest bid to defuse language and minority rights tensions between their countries.

The meeting of the two men in the Slovak town of Nove Zamky was the latest in a series of diplomatic moves aimed at easing long- standing tensions between the two countries.

Solyom and Gasparovic agreed on the use of dual Hungarian and Slovak place names in textbooks designed for use in ethnic Hungarian schools, a measure approved by the Slovak parliament on Wednesday.

The insistence of Slovak authorities on the use of Slovak place names even in textbooks written in Hungarian was a cause of resentment amongst the country's large ethnic Hungarian population.

However, hopes that the legislation might signal a thaw in the frosty relations between the two nations were dashed by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.

Shortly after the vote, he rejected outright a package of measures aimed at protecting the civil rights of ethnic minorities, which was proposed by the Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany during a tense meeting on December 15.

At a joint press conference after their meeting on Saturday, Gasparovic rejected a request from Solyom for Slovakia to adopt new legislation to protect the rights of ethnic minorities.

"The Slovak president has no powers that would make it possible to propose legislation in parliament," said Gasparovic. (dpa)