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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
Romania: Nastase Discusses Nationalism, Minority Issues
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Foreign Broadcast Information Service, November 25, 1991
Romania: Nastase Discusses Nationalism, Minority Issues
</hdr>
<body>
<p>[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]
</p>
<p> [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:
</p>
<p> [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.
</p>
<p> [Bishop] Is that happening inside Romania? Are the
Hungarians asking for independence? I think you have a Hungarian
freedom movement?
</p>
<p> [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.
</p>
<p> [Bishop] Does the Hungarian minority want to be independent?
</p>
<p> [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.
</p>
<p> [Bishop] So you do not see a Yugoslav situation arising in
your country?
</p>
<p> [Nastase] Yugoslavia is a federation. They have six
republics; they have their six different peoples, so the
situation is completely different.
</p>
<p> [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?
</p>
<p> [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.
</p>
<p> [Bishop] So, it is not foreign criticism then?
</p>
<p> [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...
</p>
<p> [Bishop, interrupting] Well we have this one...
</p>
<p> [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.
</p>
<p> [Bishop] But I did ask, are the members of the governing
party reconverted communists, or are they indeed still
communists?
</p>
<p> [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.
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>