Senator Clinton criticized European countries yesterday for their treatment of the Roma, Europe’s largest ethnic minority group, whose migration into Western European countries has fueled an anti-immigration backlash.

Delivering the keynote address at a conference at Columbia University on the Roma, also known as Gypsies, Mrs. Clinton said the nascent democracies of Eastern Europe are “struggling to understand the concept of minority rights.” She blamed those countries for not doing more to combat high rates of anti-Roma discrimination and high levels of Roma poverty, unemployment, and segregation.

“For the most part, the Roma experience in Eastern Europe has been one of exclusion,” she said.

Mrs. Clinton, who as first lady met with Roma during a trip to Hungary in 1996, said she has “tried to bring attention” to the problems facing Roma, particularly women.

The Roma are a sensitive issue for the European Union, whose expansion this year increased its Roma population by a reported 1.5 million. The expected addition of Romania and Bulgaria into the E.U. in 2007 will add another 3 million, the Economist reported.

The total European Roma population is said to be about 12 million, while about a million Roma live in America. The Roma migrated to Europe from northern India more than 500 years ago.

While the E.U. has pressed its new members from Eastern Europe to implement anti-discrimination laws, fears of Roma immigration have become a hot issue for Western European countries, as politicians and newspapers have warned of Roma stealing jobs and abusing welfare services.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton warned that the condition of Roma in Eastern European countries has failed to improve, citing reports of forced sterilization of Roma women in Slovakia.

International human-rights groups have targeted Slovakia for not clamping down on sterilization incidents in the country. Last year, the Center for Reproductive Rights released a report saying 110 Roma women in Slovakia were forcibly sterilized since 1989.

Miriam Vypalova, third secretary at the political division of the Slovak embassy in Washington, D.C., defended Slovakia’s policies toward its Roma population, which reportedly numbers about 500,000.

“Slovakia can guarantee equal rights for all citizens,” she told The New York Sun.

She said the government is trying to increase Roma employment in regions in the country – such as a Presov, Kosice, and Banska Bystrica – with a high Roma density.

She said the government has adopted new welfare policies that give recipients more financial incentives to work.

She also said the Slovak government plans to send “field activists” to schools in those regions to help teachers teach Roma children “how to behave, how to sit down, use a pen, brush their teeth.”

Mrs. Clinton said the “the treatment of the Roma” is a “test” for democracies in the region.

George Kaslov, director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Roma Rights and Recognition in New York City, called Mrs. Clinton’s speech “absolutely wonderful.”

“The Roma of Europe,” he said, “can easily be considered as the American blacks here 30 years, 40, or 50 years ago.”