Diplomat. A member of the illegal Hungarian Communist Party from 1941 onwards, he was vice-president of the Hungarian Democratic Youth Organization (MADISZ) and a staff member of the central communist daily Szabad Nép after 1945. He was then first secretary at the Hungarian Embassy in Berne until 1949, then on the staff of the Foreign Ministry. In 1956, he was appointed Hungarian ambassador in Beijing. After being counsellor at the Hungarian mission to UNESCO in Paris in 1959-60, he was head of mission in Jakarta in 1960-62 and then ambassador in Rome, but he was accused of spying at home and defected to Italy in 1970.