BRATISLAVA, Jan 11 (AFP) - A Slovakian legislator who is a vice president of NATO's parliamentary assembly collaborated with secret police in the 1970s and 1980s in the communist former Czechoslovakia, a Slovakian newspaper said, quoting extracts from his file.
Jozef Banas supplied information to the secret police on the movements of foreign journalists when he was employed in the press division of the foreign ministry of the former Czechoslovakia, the Sme daily said.
The newspaper said it had obtained a copy of Banas' file from the StB security services.
Banas, a deputy in the Slovak parliament for the Slovakian Christian Democratic Union of Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda, has denied being an agent for the StB.
"I am sure that I have never signed papers in order to work as an agent for the StB," he said in an interview with Sme.
However he admitted relating to the secret police conversations he had with foreign journalists.
Last week a Slovakian secretary of state, Jan Hurny, a member of the same party, resigned following allegations about his past as an StB agent.
A list of StB agents in Slovakia began to be released on the Internet (www.upn.gov.sk) in November.
Unlike in the Czech Republic, which split with Slovakia in 1993, Slovakian government officials are not required to prove that they did not collaborate with the secret police during the communist era.
01/11/2005 20:50 GMT - AFP