UPDATE 1-Slovak PM wants minister ousted in coalition row

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Prime Minister Robert Fico asked Slovakia's president on Friday to dismiss the farm minister in a dispute over land transfers that has split the three-party coalition government.

President Ivan Gasparovic, announcing Fico's request to dismiss Miroslav Jurena, did not say how he had responded. But under the constitution, the president must heed Fico's request, putting the coalition's future in question.

Jurena's centre-left Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) has said it could leave the coalition, led by Fico's Smer party, over the dispute.

This would strip Fico of his parliamentary majority at a time when Slovakia is hoping to win the support of other countries in the European Union to adopt the euro in 2009.

The scandal concerns a land administration agency, supervised by Jurena, whose acting boss approved deals returning land confiscated during the communist era.

Local media reported that a company close to the HZDS then acquired the land for a fraction of its market value.

Jurena has said he did nothing wrong.

(Reporting by Peter Laca, writing by Jan Lopatka; editing by Timothy Heritage)

Keywords: SLOVAKIA COALITION/SACKING

[BRATISLAVA/Reuters/Finance.cz]