Hungarian railway workers' trade union extended a strike to affect the whole country from 6 p.m. local time on Sunday, Hungarian News Agency MTI reported.

The trade union started an open-ended strike from zero hour local time Sunday, but the strike only affected areas east of the River Danube during the day.

Hungarian State Railways (MAV) spokesman Imre Kavalecz said only about half of 104 international services had operated on Sunday.

The union is demanding a payment of 250,000 forints (about 1,330 U.S. dollars) for every worker from privatization revenues of Cargo, a unit of MAV and a 10 percent pay rise, paid retroactively, for all those who are working for MAV's subsidiary companies.

"The demands are impossible to fulfill," MAV Chief Executive Istvan Heinczinger told a press conference on Sunday afternoon. He said that demands for payment from Cargo privatization revenues to employees of another company were illegal.

(Xinhua News Agency December 15, 2008)