Hungary’s foreign minister says a call by a far-right parliamentarian to register all of the country’s Jews as potential security risks is “completely unacceptable.”

Janos Martonyi also denies suggestions that Hungary is lenient with neo-Nazis.

His remarks Wednesday, during a visit to Austria, reflected Hungary’s attempts to deal with the fallout from the comments by Marton Gyongyosi of the Jobbik party.

Gyongyosi told the legislature last week that it was time “to assess … how many people of Jewish origin there are here, and especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who represent a certain national security risk.”

Gyongyosi later apologized to “our Jewish compatriots” but added that Hungary needed to be wary of “Zionist Israel and those serving it also from here.”
Some 550,000 Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust.

(AP)