"Slovakia is a sovereign state, it has the right to decide according to its own interests," he told AFP.

"It is in our strategic interest to build the third and fourth reactors of the Mochovce power station."

Mochovce, which already has two active reactors, is in central Slovakia, just 140 kilometres (90 milea) from the Austrian capital Vienna.

Austria renounced nuclear energy and halted the construction of a power station after the government lost a referendum in 1978.

The Slovak government's position is not new but it took on a new dimension on Sunday after an interview with Rusko was broadcast on Austrian public radio in what Austria's main political parties described as an "affront".

"We have to understand that the Austrians are very sensitive to this problem. But these declarations are not worthy of our partners," said Rusko, alluding to the fact that Slovakia joined the European Union on May 1.

"In the future we are going to have a big problem producing electricity in the whole of Europe," he said, estimating that Europe's production capacity could fall short by 2020.

Rusko said he preferred not to close the two old reactors in Slovakia's other nuclear plant Jaslovske-Bohunice, which has four reactors altogether.

"We do not have to close a power station which is absolutely safe and which has a licence to function without any problem until 2020," he added.

The closure of one reactor in 2006 and another in 2008 was, however, a condition included in Slovakia's EU accession treaty.

Both units were built with the Soviet Union in the 1970s when Czechoslovakia as it was then was part of the Soviet Bloc.

"It is absolutely unfeasible," said a European Commission diplomat in Brussels.

Austria has had similar arguments with its Czech neighbour since the launch in 2000 of Temelin nuclear power station in the south of the country, 60 kilometres from the Austrian border.

WAR.WIRE