Double standards hurt reputation of US in Hungary, says minister

Budapest, March 22 (MTI) - Minister of Human Resources Zoltan Balog posted an open letter addressed to US Ambassador to Hungary Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis on his website on Friday, stating that double standards hurt the reputation of the United States in Hungary.

Balog said the US ambassador had issued a statement earlier this week, in which she said the government s decision to award a national Tancsics Prize to Ferenc Szaniszlo, an individual who has publicly engaged in hate speech, was "deeply disappointing". Yet, early this month, the US was planning to award a person who had made statements that harm human dignity, the minister added.

Senator John Kerry and First Lady Michelle Obama were going to present Egyptian women s rights activist Samira Ibrahim the Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award and the State Department only took her off the list of recipients after it had been revealed in the press that she had made inappropriate statements, Balog said.

He asked Tsakopoulos to inform him how the US government handled this affair, what conclusions have been drawn from it and what steps have been taken to prevent such cases from happening again.

It will help constructive cooperation between the two countries if they learn about each other s concerns not from the press but they try to understand the other s real intentions before turning to publicity, Balog said.

Upon Balog s request, Szaniszlo, an anchor of private channel Echo TV, announced on Wednesday that he would return the prize which he had received as part of celebrations of the March 15 national holiday last week.