Today, officials are thinking along the same lines as they plan to upgrade the 695 km (432 miles) river, which runs through eastern Hungary, to international shipping standards in a bid to bridge a gulf between the prosperous west and impoverished east.

"Eastern Hungary needs a chance to flourish," said Janos Szakal, who heads one of three shipping ports in Szeged, southern Hungary. "The Tisza is our only chance."

While western Hungary and its capital Budapest have made giant strides toward European Union membership in the 10 years since the fall of communism, the east remains blighted by poverty, unemployment and lack of opportunity.

"Eventually, shipping along here will be very lucrative," said Szakal, who is leading efforts to develop the Tisza.

Widening and deepening parts of the river, straightening bends and building ports and dams would make the Tisza eligible for European Union and United Nations funding.

"The U.N. and EU have a different attitude toward funding once a river is an international one," said Janos Fonagy, Hungary's Water and Transport Minister.

"Developing the Tisza would really help the region. It's only one part of how to reduce the (economic) gap, but it's an important one," he said.

CYANIDE SPILL, NATO BOMBING

The Tisza, which starts in Romania, winds north into Ukraine and drops into Hungary and then Yugoslavia before joining the Danube, was in early 2000 the scene of one of Europe's worst environmental disasters.

More than 100,000 cubic metres (3.5 million cubic feet) of cyanide-tainted water overflowed from a dam in Romania, killing fish and wildlife downstream all the way to the Danube.

"After the cyanide spill, what little tourism we had died off," said Mihaly Nadas, a restaurant owner in Szolnok, a town of about 80,000 people standing at the halfway point of the Tisza's winding path through Hungary.

Nadas and other residents want to attract tourists to their town and bridge the gap between Hungary's west and east. But among the problems they face is the spring flooding which forces thousands of people to evacuate each year.

Szolnok's local government has earmarked $1 million to develop the town's waterfront, building restaurants and a theatre and shoring up parts of the river to create 120 hectares (296 acres) of run-off wetlands.

BOMBING WAS COSTLY

Developing the Tisza would also help offset millions of dollars lost in shipping since NATO bombed Danube bridges at Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, during its 1999 air campaign to oust Yugoslav troops from Kosovo.

The broken bridges have effectively blocked the busy Danube shipping route and are costing the economies of Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia around $320 million a year.

The Tisza joins the Danube just south of Novi Sad. Ships from the lower Danube countries could travel up the Tisza and into Hungary as an alternate route and use a water channel in southern Hungary connecting the two rivers.

In a first major step toward cross-border cooperation, ships from Yugoslavia began making their way up the Tisza and into Hungary last May, delivering 60,000 tonnes of construction materials to Szeged, Szakal said.

Already, 255 km (158 miles) of the Tisza are navigable for shipments of heavy freight, from just north of Szeged down through Yugoslavia.

The Tisza is also one of Hungary's largest farming regions, exporting about 400,000 tonnes of grain a year.

While the river already has three ports, only six barges a week make the trip south from Szeged into Yugoslavia.

"We would at least triple barge numbers if the Tisza won international waterway status," said Szakal.