[Interview with Foreign Minister Adrian Nastase by John Bishop in Pretoria on 22 November; from the "Agenda" program presented by Freek Robinson--recorded. Johannesburg SABC TV 1 Network in English 1815 GMT 24 Nov 91]

[Text] [Robinson] On 22 November, South Africa and Romania established full diplomatic relations at a ceremony in Pretoria attended by South Africa's foreign minister and his Romanian counterpart, Dr. Adrian Nastase. Sunday "Agenda" took the opportunity to interview Dr. Nastase, and John asked him to comment on the rising tide of nationalism in East and Central Europe and on how this might affect Romania:

[Nastase] The communist regime that dominated political life in our countries for half a century kept all those problems under pressure and very compressed, so after the revolutions in all those countries in search of an identity, in search of freedom, some nationalist temptations took place. It was like a Pandora's box.

[Bishop] Is that happening inside Romania? Are the Hungarians asking for independence? I think you have a Hungarian freedom movement?

[Nastase] Well, independence is not really a human right or something that should belong among the rights of the minorities, and this might be a problem. I mean, independence is something that you usually connect with the state, not with the minority.

[Bishop] Does the Hungarian minority want to be independent?

[Nastase] Well, I don't think so. They are part of the Romanian society; they have the necessary rights. Romania--the Romanian Parliament--just adopted the new constitution. The minorities, we have 15 minorities that represent 10 percent of our population, so Romania is a unitarian state; it has 90 percent Romanians and 10 percent minorities. So the minorities have their rights according to international standards, and the Hungarians, if we refer to them, they have their own party, a party based on ethnicity; they have 41 members, representatives in the Romanian Parliament. So they can express themselves, and I am sure that they feel at home, I would say, in Romanian society. They lived for centuries in our society that has--well--the Romanians as you know have more than 2,000 years of history in Europe. They are a Latin country, a Latin people with a lot of traditions and, of course, we are aware that we have to behave in a very balanced way to assure the rights, the human rights, for Romanians and the rights for the minorities as well.

[Bishop] So you do not see a Yugoslav situation arising in your country?

[Nastase] Yugoslavia is a federation. They have six republics; they have their six different peoples, so the situation is completely different.

[Bishop] Now let us talk about your government itself in Romania. Overseas commentators have said that there really has not been a revolution against communism; there has been a coup d'etat, that you yourself, sir, and members of your cabinet are still unconverted communists. What do you say about that?

[Nastase] I am familiar with those criticisms. As a [word indistinct] I would say that I do not know any single government that is really praised by the population and not very heavily criticized.

[Bishop] So, it is not foreign criticism then?

[Nastase] There are also internal criticisms, because we have 2,000 newspapers and most of them are antigovernment. So I think it is normal because we accumulated so many frustrations in the past. So it is very difficult to be happy with this government inside and outside. But now, because I do not want to elaborate too much on that--after the September events--we have a new government, and in this government the representatives of the opposition are also in the government, and mainly the National Liberal Party, which is one of the main opposition parties. So, I think it would be very difficult to consider this government as being noncommunist and communist. And also, I think, you should judge a government according to what they have done, and I am all ready to talk with you, but unfortunately, it seems that we do not have enough time...

[Bishop, interrupting] Well we have this one...

[Nastase, continues]...to explain to you that this government and the previous one succeeded in the privatization of the land--85 percent--began the privatization of the big enterprises, changed completely the banking system, created a very good framework for foreign investments, liberalized prices and, quite recently, succeeded in making the internal [word indistinct]. It succeeded also in developing a human rights framework, and so on and so forth, I think you have to judge a government according to what it has done.

[Bishop] But I did ask, are the members of the governing party reconverted communists, or are they indeed still communists?

[Nastase] No, they are no longer communists. If you ask me, if they were members of the Communist Party, you have to take into account that Romania has--in Romania the Communist Party was like a trade union. We had 4 million members of the Communist Party. So I think it is not very relevant. You have to make a clear difference between communism as an ideology, and the [word indistinct] we had with a certain infrastructure [word indistinct] the Communist Party. So I can tell you that there are no communist-minded people in my government, that the president is a very open-minded person, and that we are very much trying to prove through what we are doing that we are heading toward democracy and a market economy.