BRATISLAVA, March 6, 2008 (AFP) - Slovakia and Hungary want to end a 40-year old battle over who has the right to put the Tokaj name on wine produced in the cross-border area by recognising it as a single region, the Slovak agriculture ministry told AFP on Thursday.

'The intergovernmental agreement is now being intensively discussed ... The ambition of the Slovak agriculture ministry is to sign this agreement in the autumn,' ministry spokesman Stanislav Haber said.

Both countries have fought over the right to put the Tokaj brand on wines produced in the cross-border region since the 1970s when Hungary won international recognition for its brand and refused to recognise Slovak producers' rights to use the name.

Budapest hammered home its advantage by registering Tokaj as an exclusive brand with the European Union in 1993.

The two countries, which have an uneasy recent history partly stemming from Hungarian domination of the Slovaks under the pre-World War I Austro-Hungarian Empire, took a first step to settling their wine brand battle in 2004.

In that year they agreed that the Tokaj region belonged to both countries and that they should cooperate on the brand.

Around 20 percent of the Tokaj region, which has a specific micro-climate allowing cultivation of grapes to produce the golden-coloured sweet wine, lies in Slovakia.