Hungary gov t ready to give access to communist-era secret files - paper

The Justice Ministry is currently working on a draft law to this effect to ready it for submission to the government within weeks, the paper said.

    The data was originally stored on 18 magnetic tapes and subsequently transferred to a digital medium. They contain information on some 50,000 people who once worked for the state security services, including agents and informants.

    Hungary s former prime minister Gordon Bajnai appointed a committee of experts in the spring to monitor the processing of secret files. The work of the Kenedi committee, headed by historian Janos Kenedi, who has for long argued for making the sensitive files public, could now become redundant, the paper said.

    Kenedi earlier said his committee s work involved processing the data stored on the tapes restored by IT experts -- now held by the national security services -- with the aim of "decriminalising and depoliticising" them.

    Bajnai said earlier that most of the files, originally classified until 2060, would gain open access and only those who raise security concerns would be kept under wraps.