By Jan Krcmar

BRATISLAVA, June 26 (Reuter) - Slovakia rejected European Union criticism on Thursday over a school history text published with EU funding which denies the persecution of Slovak Jews during World War Two.

EU officials had no right to comment and seemed to be trying to discredit Slovakia internationally, the Education Ministry said in a statement.

EU External Relations Commissioner Hans van den Broek told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday he had urged the government in Bratislava to withdraw the book -- The History of Slovakia and the Slovaks by Milan Durica.

The Education Ministry statement referred to similar comments by van den Broek's spokesman to a Bratislava newspaper.

``The Ministry of Education considers these statements... not only as outside (the spokesman's) authority but also a fact that can be interpreted as interference into the internal affairs of Slovakia and a serious attempt to discredit her internationally,'' it said.

Slovak leaders want to join the European Community and the NATO military alliance but have been cold-shouldered by Western governments critical of their human rights record and faction-ridden politics.

The history book was published with financing from the EU's PHARE aid programme and recommended as a handbook for lessons in Slovak schools. It has come under heavy criticism from Jewish groups and historians.

Tracing Slovak history from the First Century AD to modern times, the book denies any persecution of Slovakia's 70,000-strong Jewish community under the clero-fascist Slovak State, a Nazi German puppet set up in March 1939.

Fewer than 10,000 Slovak Jews survived the Holocaust and Slovakia<'s Jewish community now number around 4,000.

``(The Slovak government) under (President) Dr Jozef Tiso decided to solve the Jewish question in conformity with Christian moral principles,'' the books says.

Conditions within the Jewish ``labour camps'' were ``close to the normal living conditions of the Slovak population,'' it says.

An EU official in Bratislava said among many questionable passages was one which implied that it was a humanitarian gesture to reunite entire families at extermination camps in Poland.

The EU official told Reuters the Commission had asked for a review of the book by an independent source and if it was negative the EU would ask for its money to be returned.