Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic has backed police action at a football match on Saturday in which about 50 people were injured when Slovak and Hungarian fans clashed sparking protests in Budapest.

`The state has to show its power when facing intolerance and violence,` Gasparovic said following a meeting Monday with Interior Minister Robert Kalinak.

`It`s not normal when extremists abuse the soccer field to take up historical and political wrongs. (...) Those who came to that match, knew how it would end - and I don`t mean the score,` Gasparovic added.

The police action against troublemakers, including fans who came to the match from Hungary, raised protests in Budapest.

The Hungarian Foreign Affairs Ministry called on Slovak authorities to investigate whether the police action was appropriate.

`The police intervened against rowdies from both (the Slovak and Hungarian) sides. It was a match of the Slovak league, between Slovak teams, on the Slovak territory,` said Interior Minister Robert Kalinak.

The Slovak premier soccer league`s match took place in the south Slovakian town of Dunajska Streda, near the Slovak-Hungarian border. Local fans started to throw stones and the match had to be interrupted due to violence after 17 minutes.

The historically tense relations between Slovak and Hungarian have soured after the nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS) joined the left-dominated government coalition in 2006.

Tensions between Bratislava and Budapest have worsened over the past few weeks after the publication of Slovak geography textbooks omitting the Hungarian versions of geographical names.

Slovaks were dominated under the pre-World War I Austro-Hungarian empire. The creation of independent Czechoslovakia at the end of the war stirred resentment among some Hungarians. Czechoslovakia split amicably into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993 after the communist regime in the country was toppled in 1989.