Hungarian Prime Minister Mr Peter Medgyessy admitted this morning that he served as a communist secret service counter-intelligence officer over 20 years ago.
Moving to avert a political crisis over newspaper and opposition accusations that he had been a state spy, Mr Medgyessy told parliament he had been a counter-espionage officer at the finance ministry from 1977 to 1982.
This was a delicate period for Hungary as the central European state tried to edge away from President Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union and open up to the West, secretly joining the International Monetary Fund in 1982 and sounding out European Union membership.
Mr Medgyessy, who took office only last month after winning April elections, had threatened to resign if he did not have the confidence of his own Socialist Party and his junior coalition partner, the liberal Free Democrats.
The Socialist parliamentary group unanimously backed the premier at a meeting late last night, but Free Democrat deputies voted to accept Mr Medgyessy's resignation, if it were offered.
The two groups were meeting again this morning.