Excitement Galore as Feri Gets a Face Full of Bush

Last week offered big, big excitement for Hungary's leaders, as Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány and his closest aides made the rounds in New York and Washington, D.C., and even got a brief audience with US President George W. Bush (that's them together at left). With the PM on his four-day trip to America were Foreign Minister Ferenc Somogyi, Economy Minister János Kóka, Defense Minister Ferenc Juhász, as well as Gábor Kuncze, leader of the ruling Socialist Party's liberal coalition partner. On Wednesday, the first day of his four-day visit, Gyurcsány met UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York and discussed an EU plan to settle the problems in Kosovo and the Balkans. On the same day, he visited a synagogue to attend the celebration of the Jewish New Year (there he is again, looking all thoughtful with wife Klára Dobrev at bottom) then had lunch at a swanky club in Manhattan with some American businesspeople. In the evening, he inaugurated the new home of the Hungarian Cultural Institute of New York. A group of 30 to 40 Hungarian-Americans protested against him in front of the building, holding up signs that demanded Hungarian citizenship for all Hungarians and autonomy for Transylvania, and denounced the government as a "liberal-Bolshevik mafia." Like we said, big, big excitement!

Once in Washington, Gyurcsány placed a wreath at the statues of Hungarian patriot Lajos Kossuth and Swedish Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg at the U.S. Capitol, had lunch with super-Hungarian-American Congressman Tom Lantos, then met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. At the meeting, he "stressed the balanced nature of American-Hungarian relations." He then met Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Speaker of the House of Representative Dennis Hastert. While the press was not present at these meetings, it was said that they also "acknowledged the balanced relationship." He then held a lecture at George Washington University on Trans-Atlantic relations, including the balanced nature of American-Hungarian relations, and got an important award from the university, even though some people there were apparently concerned by the fact that Gyurcsány is a member of the liberal-Bolshevik mafia.

But all this was just the warm-up for the main event: the meeting with the big GWB. As for what was discussed during the PM's 50 minutes of face-time with Bush, aside from more "balanced relationship" blablabla, the substance seemed to mostly involve visas, and more specifically the desire by the Hungarian side to get the American side to quit demanding that Hungarians get them before coming to the States. Also, Gyurcsány apparently invited Bush to visit Hungary during next fall's 50th anniversary of the 1956 uprising, which Bush sounded non-committal about, perhaps because he had also heard that his guest was a member of the liberal-Bolshevik mafia.