Law professor Ferenc Madl was inaugurated as Hungary's new President on Friday in a ceremony attended by 10,000 people at the historic Parliament building.

Madl, elected in a divisive parliament vote in June, called for national unity to help bring to a successful conclusion European Union accession talks, which began in 1998. Hungary hopes to join the EU in 2003, but diplomatic sources say post-2005 is more likely. The post of president is largely ceremonial but it is an important symbol of political equilibrium in Hungary, which has built one of the most stable democracies in the region after Soviet-controlled regimes fell in Eastern Europe a decade ago. Although all the major parties agreed on Madl as a candidate, he was elected only in the third round in ballots, which underscored deep-seated tensions between the former ruling Socialists and the center-right coalition government headed by the Fidesz-MPP party. Madl is a 69-year-old member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a university professor of international private law in Budapest and an honorary professor of several universities abroad. He was also a member of Hungary's first democratically elected government set up in 1990, starting as a minister without portfolio and going on to become minister of education and culture.