Contact: Sammy McDavid
Hungary's ambassador to the United States will be in the state next week for a visit organized by the Radvanyi Chair in International Security Studies at Mississippi State University.
Ferenc Somogyi will be featured speaker Thursday [March 20] for the Executive Lecture Forum of Jackson. His address, titled "Hungary and the United States: Allies and Cooperating Partners," will be part of the group's noon luncheon in the downtown University Club.
While in the capital city for two days, the veteran diplomat also will visit with Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant and Maj. Gen. Harold Cross, commander of the Military Department of Mississippi.
Somogyi, a member of the foreign service since 1968, is a skilled negotiator who, among other major achievements, helped facilitate the withdrawal of Soviet Union troops from Hungary in the early 1990s. A doctoral graduate in world economics from Budapest University, he also was the country's minister of foreign affairs from 2004-06.
Slightly smaller than the state of Indiana, Hungary is a Central European nation of nearly 10 million people. Though landlocked, it is strategically located astride the primary land routes between Western Europe and the Balkan Peninsula and Mediterranean basin. Primary natural resources include bauxite, coal, natural gas, and abundant fertile soils.
Hungary joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
Though Executive Lecture Forum programs are not open to the general public, interested members of the news media always are welcomed. To ensure adequate seating, reporters planning to attend are asked to contact Tan Tsai, research associate at the MSU center, at 662-325-4062 or 325-8406 as soon as possible.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.