Hungary president stays put despite plagiarism row

Hungarian President Pal Schmitt, a close ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, rejected late Friday calls to resign despite being stripped of his doctorate title for plagiarism. "I wrote my thesis to the best of my abilities. It was an honest piece of work," Schmitt, 69, said on national television in a keenly awaited performance. "To be honest I can see no link" between the plagiarism affair and resigning, he said. "I accept that I have been stripped of my diploma, but I complied with the rules of 20 years ago." He added: "I still have energy though.... At 70 years old I will do my PhD to prove that I can do it." Schmitt was stripped of his 1992 doctorate title Thursday after Budapest's Semmelweis University found he had copied "word-for-word" large passages of another writer's work in his thesis on the history of the Olympic Games. The president, whose job is largely ceremonial, sparked speculation that he might throw in the towel on Friday when he reportedly cancelled all his public engagements for the day. Earlier in the day, Orban told public radio that the president alone must make the decision on whether he should resign, while opposition parties called on him to step down. "He must go because he has become unworthy of the post of president," said Socialist party leader Attila Mesterhazy. A Semmelweis investigative committee had found Tuesday that Schmitt had copied large parts of his thesis, but ruled that the text complied with requirements at the time and put the blame on the university for not noticing. Nevertheless, the university's senate decided to strip him of his doctorate two days later. Weekly HVG first outed Schmitt in January, reporting that the "majority" of his thesis was a "word-for-word translation" of a text written in French in the 1980s by late Bulgarian sports expert and diplomat Nikolai Georgiev. Soon after, respected news website index.hu said a further 17 pages of Schmitt's conclusions had been word-for-word translations of a dissertation by German professor Klaus Heinemann, written in English in 1991. Last year, German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned after his doctorate was rescinded for plagiarism, leading to scrutiny of the academic achievements of other public figures.