Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has written a message of condolence in a book opened for President George H.W. Bush at the US embassy in Budapest.
PM Orbán was welcomed at the embassy gate by David Cornstein, the US ambassador on Thursday afternoon, and after expressing his condolences talks between the two followed.
The prime minister said the Hungarian nation will always be grateful to President Bush, and on Monday PM Orbán sent a letter of condolence to the Bush family. “It is with deep sorrow that we have heard that George Herbert Walker Bush, an outstanding American patriot and a friend of Hungary, has left us. Please accept my deepest personal condolences and those of the whole Hungarian nation,” the prime minister wrote.
“The Hungarians will always remember him and be grateful for everything that President Bush did for the dismantling of the Iron Curtain, and to free Hungary and Central Europe from Soviet oppression. His visit to Hungary in 1989 gave us hope and encouragement at a critical moment,” he said, adding that “we will never forget his noble and firm determination to ensure historic changes in our region”.