By Barbara Erling
WARSAW, March 24 (Reuters) - Lithuania warned years ago that Hungarian officials posed a security risk within NATO, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday, after a report that confidential information was being passed to Russia.
Hungary has maintained warm ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin's government despite the Ukraine war, often dissenting from the EU's pro-Kyiv policies.
Poland's Tusk said information had come "from various places for a long time" about leaks to Moscow from closed‑door meetings of the European bloc and suspicions that information from the trans‑Atlantic military alliance was also being passed on.
"As early as 2019 ... Lithuania ... requested the exclusion of the Hungarian delegation from a NATO meeting, stating that there were suspicions that the Hungarian delegation would pass on information of the highest confidentiality to Moscow," Tusk told reporters before a government meeting.
According to the Washington Post at the weekend, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto had briefed his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov during breaks at EU meetings.
Szijjarto initially dismissed that as "fake news".
But in a video posted on X by a government spokesperson on Tuesday, he acknowledged that he consulted with non-EU countries before or after meetings of the bloc's foreign ministers, including the Russians, Americans, Turks and Israelis, adding that this was "perfectly natural".
Lithuania's foreign ministry and a Hungarian government spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment after Tusk's remarks.
"We don't comment on individual remarks by Allied officials," added a NATO official.
'GUESSES', SAYS LITHUANIA
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, speaking on Monday to the national broadcaster, said that in 2024 a NATO member state raised similar concerns - which he described as "guesses" - that Hungarian representatives were passing information from alliance meetings to Moscow.
"When we were preparing for the 2023 Vilnius summit, in the meetings we tried to not include Hungarian representatives, especially those where sensitive questions were discussed," he added, referring to a NATO summit.
Vytautas Leskevicius, Lithuania's ambassador to NATO between 2015-2020, told Reuters he had no recollection of Hungary's exclusion being sought as Tusk said.
Moscow has not commented on the furore, although it frequently accuses the West of smearing it with false accusations.
Adding to the controversy, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has ordered a probe into what he called wiretapping of his foreign minister.
In its report, the Washington Post cited an unidentified European security official as saying Szijjarto used to call Lavrov regularly with "live reports" of EU meetings.
(Reporting by Barbara Erling, Pawel Florkiewicz, Alan Charlish, Andrius Sytas)
