Close to 500 Hungarian troops to be deployed in foreign missions have been bidden farewell in Tata, NW Hungary: 354 to Kosovo to join the Hungarian KFOR contingent while 139 are going for the third rotation of the Iraqi training mission.

About five hundred Hungarian soldiers have returned home from their peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan and Kosovo. The ceremony to welcome the troops back was held in, southeastern town of Hódmezõvásárhely on Friday.

Hungary is going ahead with plans to upgrade equipment for its PRT mission in Afghanistan in spite of a call by President Hamid Karzai to demobilise the NATO reconstruction teams, the daily Népszabadság daily said on Thursday.

Hungarian peacekeeper István Papp, who was kidnapped in Sudan in early October, has been freed. The news was forwarded by the Sudanese foreign minister to his Hungarian counterpart over the phone on Wednesday.

Experts at the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) analyze the recording of a telephone interview with a Hungarian peacekeeper kidnapped in the Sudan to make sure that the voice heard there is that of István Papp.