Former Ambassador Palmer Receives High State Honor from Prime Minister Bajnai

December 2, 2009

Ambassador Palmer (left) and Prime Minister Bajnai

On December 2 during his visit to Washington, D.C. Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai took time out from his busy schedule to present a high state honor to Mark Palmer, who had been the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary during its transition to democracy twenty years ago, at a dinner in the Hungarian Ambassador’s residence.

The Prime Minister awarded the Order of Merit, Commander’s Cross, to the former diplomat who represented the U.S. in Budapest from 1986 to 1990. Bajnai called Palmer “a legendary Ambassador whose name will go down in Hungarian history books.” Palmer was not only a witness to, but an active participant in, the revival of Hungarian democracy, he said. The Prime Minister noted that the Ambassador was committed to democracy, and supported the dissidents who had been persecuted by the police and had later become senior politicians in Hungary.