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Budapest  - Hungary's socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany reacted angrily on Tuesday to comments made in an interview in the UK Financial Times newspaper by his arch rival, the centre- right opposition leader Viktor Orban.

Orban accused the Hungarian government of wasting the opportunity to use the 25-billion-dollar rescue loan granted by the International Monetary Fund, the EU and the World Bank last October.

Washington  - US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reaffirmed the United States' "special relationship" with Britain after a meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Tuesday.

Miliband became the first foreign official to meet Clinton since her confirmation last month as the top US diplomat. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier held separate talks with Clinton just hours later.

Bratislava  - The Slovak parliament Tuesday overruled a presidential veto on a law that allows use of Hungarian place names in textbooks for country's Hungarian minority.

The house overrode the veto in a 106-32 vote, while 12 lawmakers were absent. An absolute majority of 76 votes in the 150-seat house was required to throw out the veto issued by President Ivan Gasparovic in December.

Bogota  - Leftist rebels in Colombia on Tuesday released a former provincial governor that they had held hostage since 2001, a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed.

Alan Jara, former governor of the southern province of Meta, was handed over to Red Cross officials, Yves Heller, the spokesman for the organization in Colombia, told reporters.

Following Jara's release by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the jungle in southern Colombia, he was set to travel in a Brazilian helicopter to the city of Villavicencio, near the Colombian capital Bogota, Heller said.