Slovak PM attacks media with Hitler jabs

By Martin Santa

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Slovakia's leftist prime minister accused the country's print media on Tuesday of engaging in opposition politics, having ties to communist-era secret services and sympathising with Hitler.

It was one of the sharpest attacks by Robert Fico against broadsheets since his cabinet, which includes far-right nationalists and the HZDS party of authoritarian former prime minister Vladimir Meciar, took power in 2006.

Buoyed by overwhelming support for his welfare-state policies and poll ratings of almost 50 percent, Fico has alarmed some diplomats with measures such as a media law that rights groups say stifles press freedom and undermines democracy.

He has accused reporters in the ex-communist European Union newcomer of taking bribes and manipulating information after reports of alleged corruption in his cabinet.

And on Tuesday, he challenged newspapers to enter politics if they wanted to take him on in 2010 elections.

"They play the opposition game and act as the opposition," Fico told news agency SITA, naming the main dailies Sme, Pravda and Plus 1 Den. "Let them found a political party ... and toe the starting line in 2010."

He blasted writers at weekly Plus 7 Days -- like most of the broadsheets critical of Fico's government for awarding contracts to businesses close to his administration -- of having ties to the former communist secret services.

He also accused Pravda of having past sympathy for Nazi Germany, a scathing comment in this country of 5.3 million people, which became independent and sided with the Germans before Berlin annexed the Czech part of the republic in 1939.