BRATISLAVA (Reuter) - The Slovak state prosecutor on Monday dropped an indictment accusing Interior Minister Gustáv Krajči of thwarting a controversial double referendum in May because of insufficient evidence, the official TASR news agency said. The charge against Krajči alleged that he had foiled the referendums on Slovakia's NATO membership and on direct presidential elections by omitting the second question from ballot papers. "The district prosecutor...has put to one side...the accusation against...Minister of the Interior Krajči concerning the referendum held on May 23 and 24, 1997," TASR quoted the Bratislava District Prosecutor Tibor Šumichrast as saying. It said Šumichrast dropped the case because of the absence of strong enough suspicion that a crime had actually been committed. The failed referendums were cited in a European Commission report in July which said Slovakia's political problem's were, uniquely among 10 central and east European countries seeking EU admission, serious enough to rule out an invitation to membership negotiations. Slovakia was also omitted from the ranks of those invited to join NATO at the Madrid Summit in July. The chaotic situation arose in the context of a long-running rivalry between President Michal Kováč and Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar. Kováč and his supporters want future presidents elected directly rather than by parliament, where Mečiar's supporters have a majority. The referendum committee declared the widely boycotted poll void and denounced ballot papers distributed by the interior ministry without the presidential election question as a "massive swindle". Krajči at the time said he had acted in accordance with a ruling by the country's Constitutional Court that the question on the presidential election was illegal. This interpretation was emphatically denied by Milan Čič, the court's president. To complicate matters further, the accusation against the interior ministry was actually filed by deputy state prosecutor Michal Barila, Šumichrast's subordinate. Krajči is due to appear before the country's Supreme Court to give evidence on his ministry's role in the referendums on the basis of another motion filed by the leader of the opposition Hungarian Civic Party claiming he had violated the law.