DISCURSUL

preşedintelui Romāniei, Traian Băsescu,

prilejuit de Prezentarea Raportului

Comisiei Prezidenţiale pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din Romānia

(Bucureşti, 18 decembrie 2006)

Domnilor Preşedinţi ai Camerelor,

Domnule Prim Ministru,

Onoraţi membri ai Parlamentului Romāniei,

Distinşi invitaţi,

Dragi compatrioţi.

Ne īntrunim astăzi pentru a īnchide, cu deplină responsabilitate, un capitol sumbru din trecutul ţării noastre. Am citit cu mare atenţie Raportul Final al Comisiei Prezidenţiale pentru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din Romānia. Am găsit īn acest document raţiunile pentru care pot condamna regimul comunist. Pentru cetăţenii Romāniei, comunismul a fost un regim impus de un grup politic autodesemnat ca deţinător al adevărului, un regim totalitar născut prin violenţă şi īncheiat tot prin violenţă. A fost un regim de opresiune, care a expropriat poporul romān de cinci decenii de istorie modernă, care a călcat īn picioare legea şi a obligat cetăţenii să trăiască īn minciună şi frică.

Comisia Prezidenţială a fost īnfiinţată īn aprilie 2006, ca un răspuns la cererile societăţii de asumare şi condamnare a trecutului totalitar. Am considerat necesară constituirea Comisiei tocmai pentru a fundamenta intelectual şi moral actul de condamnare. Nu am dorit o simplă repudiere formală a trecutului comunist, la nivelul unor declaraţii de complezenţă. O asemenea condamnare ar fi fost neconvingătoare. Am cerut Comisiei o analiză riguroasă a componentelor sistemului totalitar, a principalelor instituţii care au facut posibilă această tragedie, precum şi a personalităţilor implicate decisiv īn sistem. Avem nevoie de o analiză aprofundată a sistemului comunist din Romānia. Comisia a făcut acest lucru, īn peste 600 de pagini, lucru pentru care īi mulţumesc. Este nevoie īn continuare de analize pertinente cu privire la aparatul de partid şi la structurile şi metodele Securităţii. Trebuie să avem o radiografie clară a ceea ce s-a petrecut īn domeniul economic, unde o industrializare aberantă şi o economie de comandă au produs consecinţe īncă vizibile. Trebuie să avem cāt mai multe detalii privind colectivizarea agriculturii, strămutările forţate, prigoana īmpotriva celor care au rezistat, distrugerea elitelor şi a sistemului educaţional tradiţional, hărţuirea cultelor şi arestările de personalităţi religioase.

SPEECH

the President of Romania, Traian Băsescu,

occasioned by the Presentation of the Report

Presidential Commission for the Analysis of Communist Dictatorship in Romania

(Bucharest, December 18, 2006)

Presidents of the Chambers,

Prime Minister,

Honorable members of the Romanian Parliament,

Distinguished guests,

Dear compatriots.

We meet today to close with complete responsibility a grim chapter in our country's past. I read with great care the Final Report of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of Communist Dictatorship in Romania. I found in this document the reasons why I can condemn the communist regime. For the citizens of Romania, communism was a regime imposed by a political group self-described as the holder of truth, a totalitarian regime born through violence and ending in violence as well. It was a regime of oppression, which expropriated the Romanian people of five decades of modern history, which trampled the law and forced the citizens to live in lies and fear.

The Presidential Commission was set up in April 2006 as a response to the demands of the society to assume and condemn the totalitarian past. We considered it necessary to set up the Commission just to intellectually and morally ground the act of condemnation. We did not want a simple formal repudiation of the Communist past, at the level of statements of convenience. Such a conviction would have been unconvincing. I asked the Commission for a rigorous analysis of the components of the totalitarian system, the main institutions that made this tragedy possible, as well as the personalities involved decisively in the system. We need a thorough analysis of the communist system in Romania. The Commission has done this in over 600 pages, for which I thank. Further pertinent analyzes are needed regarding the party apparatus and the structures and methods of the Securitate. We need to have a clear radiograph of what has happened in the economic field, where aberrant industrialization and command economy have produced far-reaching consequences. We need to have as much detail as possible on the collectivization of agriculture, forced displacement, persecution against those who have resisted, the destruction of elites and the traditional educational system, harassment of cults and arrests of religious personalities.

We have the necessary data to condemn the Communist regime in Romania without a right of appeal. A democracy without memory is one in serious suffering. We must not forget to avoid the errors of the past.

The conclusions of the Commission, which I assume, state that the totalitarian communist system in Romania was imposed by foreign dictatorship. Indeed, it was an illegitimate regime, based on a fanatical ideology, an ideology of the systematic cultivation of hatred, for which class struggle? and the dictatorship of the proletariat? symbolized the essence of historical progress. Imported from the USSR, the communist ideology justified the attack on civil society, political and economic pluralism, the destruction of democratic parties, the destruction of the free market, extermination by assassination, deportations, forced labor, imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people. Behind the mask of socialist humanism? the deepest contempt for man as an individual hid.

Based on the examination of the analytical literature and the existing testimonies proving the antipatriotic nature of communist totalitarianism, we can state that the Communist regime in Romania (1945-1989) was illegitimate and criminal. I do not deny that there were periods of relative lull and that some people believed in the system. For the overwhelming majority of the population, it was a mutilated existence, lived under direct or indirect terror, and where the notion of freedom had lost any meaning. So it is time to evaluate the nature and legacy of the communist regime. Some have succumbed to the temptation to idealize the period of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, forgetting that he had established and consolidated the Communist terror in Romania, with his hundreds of thousands of dead, Nicolae Ceausescu's regime coming to settle on the ground prepared and cleaned by she. Others tried to apologize for the horrors of the Ceausescu era in the name of the alleged attachment to national values. The truth is that they were invoked and superlative only to strengthen the power of a group by resorting to a parade patriotism. In other words, the Communist regime in Romania, a totalitarian system based on the constant violation of human rights, on the supremacy of an ideology hostile to open society, on the monopoly of the power exercised by a small group of individuals, on repression, intimidation, humiliation and corruption. Romania suffered the consequences of the Leninist dogmas: forced industrialization, based on a vivid economic model that favored heavy industry; the liquidation of private property, associated with the brutal policy of collectivization of agriculture; the destruction of traditional values in the name of a false social modernization; the methodical control over the social space, the intimate life of the citizens (especially through the natalist politics of N. Ceausescu's dictatorship). The private sphere was thus almost completely annexed by the totalitarian party / state. Everyday life in state socialism was invaded by propaganda and control elements dictated by the party.

Timişoara today - F.Martino

Ioan Savu used to work in a detergent factory in Timişoara. On the 16th of December of 1989 he took the streets with thousands of fellow citizens. Four days later he was in front of a disbelieving Romanian Prime Minister to demand free elections and Ceauşescu's resignation. A life and a revolution.

Ioan Savu is one of the "accidental heroes" of the Romanian revolution of 1989. During the Communist regime, Savu worked in a detergent factory in Timişoara. During the bloody city revolt that triggered the fall of Ceauşescu, he played, almost accidentally, a leading role. After joining the popular delegation that represented the crowd, he himself wrote the list of requests that the revolutionaries of Timişoara gave Constantin Dăscălescu, then Prime Minister, whom Ceauşescu had sent to the city to negotiate with the insurgents. Twenty years after those dramatic events we met with him in the city where he was the protagonist of those events and where he still lives. His memories, emotions and reflections on those days that changed his life and the life of all Romanians. The voice on a revolution that, according to Savu, "is not over yet and is still working inside of us".

The revolution in Timişoara

The fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu's regime started in Timişoara, a city of Western Romania. On the 15th of December of 1989 Romanian authorities wanted to expel the reformed pastor Lazlo Tőkés, disliked by the regime because of his sermons, in which he did not omit condemnations of the regime. Having been told of the authorities' intentions, a group of faithful gathered in front of the house where he lived, in an area very near to the centre of the city. Authorities were not able to disperse the protesters and by the following day, the 16th, hundreds of people had gathered in front of the pastor's house, people belonging not only to the Hungarian community, of which Tőkés was part. In the afternoon of the same day, the slogans pro freedom of religious expression soon turned into slogans against the regime and protests spread to different areas of the city. The army, the police and the secret police (Securitate) intervened to disperse the protesters. Hundreds of people were beaten and arrested. In the afternoon of the 17th of December, though, the citizens of Timişoara took the streets again. The police opened fire and tens of people died. On the 18th protesters gathered again, there were new riots and other victims. On the 19th factory workers from the city went on strike and on the 20th they marched towards the centre of the city, where the Romanian Prime Minister Constantin Dăscălescu met with a delegation of the insurgents. They presented him with a list of requests that were not accepted. But the army, that day, retired in the barracks and the insurgents declared Timişoara a free city.

Ioan Savu addresses the crowd on December 20th, 1989

Watch the video on Youtube

Dawn

For me the revolution started at the end of 1987, after the Braşov rebellion of the 15th of November when tens of thousands of workers rebelled against the regime's restrictive economic policy, with street protests that led to hundreds of arrests. From then on, I have always thought that something would happen, and I was ready. There was a feeling in Timişoara, before the revolution, that convinced me we could be destroyed, wiped out, but not defeated. Everything happened calmly, people did not let emotions overwhelm them, at all! People were calm and extremely determined.

16 December

A neighbour called me: "come, they have started... there are ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million men... Come!" and I got out of the house. They were difficult moments for me, until late at night.

Ioan Savu

We went through the city in perfect order. We did not even step on the grass in the flowerbeds. In Opera Square there are large flowerbeds, that December there was no snow in Timişoara, it was warm and in the images from above you can see how people gathered round the flowerbeds but did not step on them.

We were a real wall. For this conviction, in Timişoara we were able to take power for a week, a week in which the city was alone. We were hoping the rest of the country would follow us but we could not be sure. Regardless of what would happen, though, I am sure we would have gone ahead.

There was an phrase, in those days: communism was born on the Neva and died on the Bega the river that washes Timişoara.

There were various groups in different areas of the city. It was not a crowd of thousands of people, the groups were made of ten to a hundred people. After the riots in Maria Square they headed towards all the areas of Timişoara. There were riots also at the County Council.

That day I did not suffer directly, I was not injured. Yes, I did feel strong emotions during the night, but it is of little importance. The day after, the 17th, it all started again and the protest became even more vigorous.

17, 18 December

On the 17th my children had gone out food shopping. Since they were not coming back, my wife went out like a lioness to bring them home. That day, on the corner of our street - it was a Sunday morning - a military car would not let us pass. I shoved the two officers off and I saw my children coming back holding hands.

In those days, people in Timişoara felt the need of cohesion. We wanted to be together, all people were together. In our city there are very few ethnic conflicts or tensions, and of little importance. It does not matter if my friend's name is Miodrag or Ianos ... what matters is that they are my neighbours, my friends, men.

On the 17th there were youngsters who wanted to head towards the centre. At that point there where shootings already in the whole city. We had Beirut to compare ourselves to, on TV we watched what was happening in Beirut ... but in Timişoara there was more turmoil than in Beirut. Bullets were flying in every which way. I told those youngsters to be careful, that people were dying everywhere in the city and that freedom could not be earned with a pin on your chest. People went to work, that day, and started discussing what was happening. It was difficult to get information. People from different neighbourhoods met in the factories, so we got a more complete picture.

The mornings, those days, went by relatively calmly. Then we took the streets in the afternoons and at night. There were a lot of shootings on the 17th but also on the 18th. Down-town, I saw people hitting the bullet-proof cars with their fists, they had nothing to fight with against the armed forces of the regime. But there was so much determination, so much firmness in not backing down. At one point I saw my daughter holding hands with a boy, all around smoke bombs and tanks. "Why are they shooting at us, daddy, we're just children!". It was not normal to shoot at people, I hope they understood it and that sooner or later their mistake.

There are still people today who believe that they did the right thing, that they acted for the good of their country. Maybe, but theirs was a sad country, a country has to be everybody's country, especially the new generations'. It was hard.

The last shootings

The last shootings were on the 19th. That day I spoke with my co-workers. I asked them to look after my wife and children if something happened to me. Then I asked myself: why am I so involved in all this? Actually, I was not more involved than others, but I felt the need to ask them to protect my family and to be free to express my convictions. Only with hindsight, though, do I realize that those were my thoughts. At that time I did not clearly know why I would say certain things, why I acted the way I did.

On the 20th, all those who had discussed on the work place over the previous days and who had taken the streets in the afternoon and the evening found some cohesion. On the 20th, all workers came out of the industrial area of Buzias united. I think there were about 30 thousand people.

The Prime Minister

That day, something happened. Something I was not expecting and that I would have never imagined. We were outside the County Council. Inside there was the Prime Minister Constantin Dăscălescu, who had come from Bucharest to negotiate with the insurgents. When one or two people were asked to go in and talk to the Prime Minister, I thought they were not enough. When only a few people leave the crowd, it immediately loses trust in them, fearing they might be bribed or that they are too scared. So I told everybody that more people had to go in, 8, 13. If there is a group, the people in the group can support each other and they do not have to give up their plans. I also thought that one or two people could not summarize the thoughts of a whole city.

I was in that group. When I went into the building, it was full of riot squads, berets, automatic weapons. They immediately told us that if someone tried to force the entrance, they would shoot us. After a week of shootings in Timişoara, I was sure they were not kidding. I then had to organize everything in some way, I left somebody inside and I went out again. There, a lawyer came up to me and asked me if he could come in too ... I knew, then, I was the leader of the group, unwillingly, accidentally. I thought also having a lawyer in our group would be good. We were not a homogenous group, we did not know each other, I did not know any of the people I went inside with.

I did not know exactly what to do. It is difficult. I felt a strong pressure on my heart when I thought that I was responsible for those outside. If something had happened, and if those inside with the weapons had shot, I would have held myself responsible. And I kept thinking, God help me understand what to do.

My name is Ioan Savu

The Prime Minister was handed various requests. I was sharper than some others, many only made basic requests. I soon realized that we needed to keep communicating with all those who were outside the building. I went out on the room's balcony, where I saw there was a microphone. I knew that to trust us, people had to know, they had to meet us in person.

So I took the microphone and said: "my name is Ioan Savu, I live on 16 Negoiului Street, apartment 18, I have 3 children and work in the Accountancy Department at the detergent factory". At that moment I was opening up, everyone knew, even the Securitate knew who I was. But those outside had to trust us, and we them.

I went back inside and wrote on a diary what Timişoara wanted those days: we no longer wanted Communism, we no longer wanted Ceauşescu, we no longer wanted the government, we wanted TV and radio to broadcast what was happening in the city, we wanted to be able to print posters, we wanted all those arrested during the revolution to be freed, we wanted the bodies of our dead back and to bury them, and we had other requests.

I caught everybody's attention, even the Prime Minister's, who came to me to discuss. I told him we did not want an eye for an eye, that we did not want to kill their families and their children, that too much blood had already been shed, but that together we had to find a solution to what was happening in Timişoara and in the country.

Those moments were difficult and full of tension. For the Prime Minister, I was Mr. Nobody, a man raised in the streets, an insect of no importance, and he looked upon us with contempt. But we had no choice, we represented the crowd outside. I was sure I would not get out of there alive. Meanwhile I went out on the balcony again, I asked to surround the building and not let anyone escape. The Communist officials blocked in the building were a guarantee that in Timişoara there would be no more shooting. I also asked for a group of youngsters to be formed, with someone who spoke Serbian, to go to the Serbian consulate with a list of the protesters' requests and the names of the members of the negotiating committee. We knew the Serbian consulate was the only link Timişoara had with the rest of the country and the world.

Ioan Savu

Notes

At one point I was reading our requests to Dăscălescu and I realized he was listening, but he was not taking any notes. I asked him why, since he might forget everything. Immediately some Communist officials approached me, they probably wanted to choke me. Meanwhile the Prime Minister was appalled by my impertinence, but with a reflex gesture he searched for a pen in his pocket and immediately all the others came with a pen and a diary for him to write with.

Talking about it now, it sounds comical, if it were not so dramatically tragic. Me reading and the Prime Minister writing the requests of us revolutionaries! It was an intense moment in my life. I wanted nothing for me, I showed later too that I did not use the revolution as an opportunity to fulfil myself socially or politically. I did not want that. I wanted things to go well for the country: if they went well for everyone, they went well for me too. I can look people straight in the eye, without being embarrassed, and that is very important.

The capital

After years of oppression, people wanted freedom, they wanted to run away from Ceauşescu, he represented evil. For them, Communism was Ceauşescu and by getting rid of him, we would get rid of Communism. But things are not that way. I too, and I thought about this many times, was glad when he was shot. But now I regret those feelings. They had to trial him, not kill him.

After the days of Timişoara I went to Bucharest because I wanted to meet with other people and tell them what we from Timişoara wanted. I left on the 24th of December, by train. But I immediately realized that I was not important for those in the capital, they did not want to have any ties with others, I was not part of their interest group. They were difficult moments.

God

At one point I was under the impression that we had made it. Then I told myself: God exists! God has come back to us!

I thought about it long. I wondered why God was coming back to us after such a long absence. And then I realized he had never left, but that it was us who were coming back to him. After those events, I tried more intensely to make Christian faith mine, to be a better man, to have more patience with others, to help them. That is how we can change the world, by changing ourselves.

Timişoara, a state of the soul

Our convictions brought benefits also on other levels, after those days. It is in Timişoara that the first free elections for a regional council and city-hall were held, in January of 1990, soon after the revolution. For the first time not only in Timişoara and the whole of Romania, but for the first time in the whole of Eastern Europe.

It was here in Timişoara that we immediately organized ourselves to give people passports. Everything seems easy now, but at that time Romanians were not allowed to travel. And for us in Timişoara, because we were near the border, TV was like a window over the world: we watched Hungarian channels, Serbian channels, we knew what happened outside our walls. But it was not enough, we wanted to go there. After the revolution, here in the city we computerized the whole procedure of granting passports. We went from 100-150 issues a day to 2000. In this region, economic growth was spectacular also. And we could have done much more, had it not been for a muddled bureaucracy.

We immediately set ourselves into action on concrete things, we showed people that we could change, that we had to change. And it was not easy. After the revolution, there was finally a horizon of prospects, in people, we wanted change, we needed change, we were ready for change. It is for this reason that Timişoara is a state of the soul, more than a city.

Bananas and consumerism

I remember a story. Even during Communism, I was not short of money. We tried to manage doing a little bit of everything, and I held a second job, taking pictures at weddings, baptisms, schools, generally in Timişoara or in the Banat. One of my sons once came back from school and told us that one of his schoolmates had received bananas from Germany. My son never asked anybody for anything. On that occasion, he told my wife "Mom, I want a piece of banana too, I asked my friend to let me taste it, but he said no". He was crying and shivering. And I thought of what kind of father I was, not even able to get a banana for my son. That is what was going on. I no longer want to live in a Socialist system where everything happens and no one is responsible for anything.

People are not happy now either, of course. There are many products in the supermarkets, but often there is no money to buy them. There are many excesses, many people steal, there are lobbies that might as well be called mobsters. But it is different from then, anyway. We had no horizon, then.

The revolution

Once you take the streets, once many people get killed, nothing matters anymore, you can only move on, and that is what happened. Before there were victims you could negotiate, retreat. After that, not anymore.

Revolution is a complex phenomenon. You need to change your mentality and if that is not yet the case, you need to go ahead, it means that the revolution still needs to work inside of us. In Romania the revolution is not over yet, even if it shows itself in a less dramatic and violent way, but only now are some ideas of change starting to be understood. And I think these changes have to take place in a non-violent way, with the force of ideas, without people dying in the streets.

We then knew what we did not want, but not exactly what we wanted. It is difficult to know what you really want if you have no term of comparison. Then, the more you go up, the more the horizon widens. And that is what is happening for us too.

Revolution of 1989 in Romania

The year 1989 caused the collapse of the totalitarian communist regime all over the Europe:

At the end of the year, especially in the Western part of Romania, the population learned, from the foreign TV channels (respectively the Hungarian, Yugoslav channels) and the broadcasts in Romanian language of the radio channels Europa Liberã (Radio Free Europe) and Vocea Americii (Radio Voice of America), about the changes that occurred in Europe. This was the reason according to which, an apparently simple event (the arbitral eviction of the Pastor of the Reformat Church, Mr. László Tökés, set forth for December 15th 1989) to become the pretext for a popular riot in Timisoara, a riot that was then transformed into a national revolution;

On 15th December, more parishioners gathered in front of the priest's house, and they wanted to impede the evacuation of the priest. Being a very crowded area, and very close to the city centre, many inhabitants of the city stopped to find out what was going on; they thickened, first involuntarily, the number of the people gathered there.

On the 16th, the number of people gathered rose to almost 400 persons, the majority not being reformed parishioners, but citizens of Timisoara, of different ethnic origins and religions; through the blocking of the traffic in the area, the situation became more radical. In the afternoon people shouted for the first time "Down with Ceausescu!”; this spark was enough to start the revolt. While shouting “Down with Ceausescu!” and “Down with communism!”, the demonstrators moved to different points of Timisoara in order to call people to the revolt. Army, Militia and Security troupes were sent there to scatter the mass, the demonstrators were bitten and arrested the same night and the following morning. 930 persons were arrested, among whom 130 were minors.

In the morning of 17th December, the mass gathered again in the centre of the town. Informed of the fact that the revolt could not be stopped, Ceausescu gave the order to open fire against the demonstrators. This order was fulfilled, and the first martyrs of the Revolution in Timisoara fell.

On 18th December, in front of the Cathedral, many young people and children gathered there and started to sing carols and to shout anti-communism slogans. At a certain moment, there appeared armed vehicles which fired a storm of gunfire over these young people on the stairs, killing many of them.

During the night of 18th / 19th, together with the complicity of the management of the County Hospital, the authorities took a part of the heroes" bodies from the hospital morgue, and transported them to Bucharest where they were burnt in the Crematorium. Other bodies were buried secretly in a common grave. In order to erase all the tracks, the documentation which referred to these bodies, was destroyed.

The next days, the resistance did not cease; on 19th December, the workers of the ELBA Factory started a strike.

On the 20th December, the general strike started in all the factories of Timisoara, a mass of thousands of people was heading for the centre of Timisoara that morning. Facing this situation, the armed forces retreated to the barracks.

The leaders of the revolution of Timisoara presented a list of requests from the part of the population to the communist authorities, a list which would become the real revolution program. The same day of 20th December 1989, Timisoara was declared the first free city of Romania by the representatives of the Romanian Democrat Front, the first democratic political formation founded on the blooded streets of Timisoara. The majority of the arrested people were freed.

On 20th December, the town of Lugoj, close to Timosoara, revolted against the communist regime, heroes of the Revolution falling here too.

On the 21st December, Ceausescu, an incurable megalomaniac, organized a grand meeting in Bucharest with the purpose of supporting him and of condemning the so-called “Hungarian hooligans” from Timisoara. But the meeting turned into an anti-Ceausescu and an anti-communism revolt. The same day, revolutionary movements started in the largest cities of the country: Cluj, Sibiu, Arad, Targu-Jiu, Caransebes, Cugir etc.; although the authorities opened fire against the demonstrators, the Romanians could not be stopped.

It was a question of hours until the fall of the system, which happened on Friday, 22ndDecember 1989, around noon, along with the fleeing of the Ceausescu family from Bucharest.

During this confusing situation, there formed lots of groups that wanted to take over the power. Until the evening of 22nd December, the group lead by Ion Iliescu and Petre Roman stood out, and who organized themselves into the National Salvation Front which took up the responsibility of bringing Romania on the way to democracy.

The day of 22nd December was declared the Day of the Victory of the Romanian Revolution. Starting with the evening of the 22nd December, unidentified forces, but named by the new authorities as counter-revolution and loyal to the communist regime, opened fire over the civilians and over the military units from many cities, creating panic and confusion.

The fear of these so-called “terrorist” elements justified in the eyes of the public opinion the superficial trial of the Ceausescu family and their execution on Christmas day of the year 1989.

The change of the communist system became a fact at the end of December, but with great sacrifices and absurdity that we wonder nowadays

Material received from the Association “Revolution Memorial” Timisoara.

Corpses lying in a morgue

The total number of deaths in the Romanian Revolution was 1,104, of which 162 were in the protests that led to the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaușescu (16–22 December 1989) and 942 in the fighting that occurred after the seizure of power by the new political structure National Salvation Front (FSN). The number of wounded was 3,352, of which 1,107 occurred while Ceaușescu was still in power and 2,245 after the FSN took power.[40][41] Official figures place the death toll of the revolution at 689 people, many of whom were civilians.[2]

January 28, 1990|From Reuters

BUCHAREST, Romania — Four top aides of former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu have confessed they are guilty of complicity to commit genocide, a lawyer told a military court Saturday.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Ion Dinca, former Interior Minister Tudor Postelnicu, Communist Party organizational chief Emil Bobu and former Vice President Manea Manescu are the first senior Ceausescu regime officials to go on trial.

A lawyer who read out the charges to the court said the four had confessed to all charges, but they did not formally enter a plea in court.

The trial was adjourned after a three-hour opening session.

During the hearing, Dinca told the court that he was a coward not to have opposed Ceausescu's orders to shoot protesters in the Transylvanian city of Timisoara.

The killings in Timisoara sparked the revolution that toppled Ceausescu on Dec. 22. He and his powerful wife, Elena, were executed on Dec. 25.

The presiding judge said it had been confirmed that 689 people were killed and 1,200 wounded in last month's uprising against Ceausescu, figures far lower than initial estimates.

Dinca, 61, responded confidently and promptly to the questions of the five uniformed military judges.

Questioned by a defense lawyer, he said: "If I did not agree (with Ceausescu's orders) I would not have lasted for a single minute."

He said that shortly before Ceausescu fled Bucharest in a helicopter as protesters cried for his blood, the dictator called a last meeting of the ruling Politburo to discuss how to restore order.

"He asked each of us if we would fight for the revolution, and we each said yes," Dinca told the trial, which is being televised live.

Dinca said Ceausescu had called for Postelnicu to be shot for not putting down the protests in Timisoara with enough force.

After being questioned, Dinca signed a document saying the court record of his remarks was accurate.

Elsewhere in Bucharest, Romania's embattled provisional government held crisis talks with three main opposition parties in the face of mounting public discontent, party sources said.

The ruling National Salvation Front demanded the meeting hours after Vice President Dumitru Mazilu resigned, accusing the front of using Stalinist methods.

"An aide of President Ion Iliescu called during the night to invite us," one opposition party source said, adding that no reason was given.

Leaders of the National Peasants Party, the National Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party attended the talks in the Popular Front's heavily guarded headquarters in the Foreign Ministry.

The three old parties, banned at the start of Communist rule in 1947, accuse the leaders of the five-week-old Popular Front of being closet Communists.

The parties formed a loose opposition coalition this week after the Popular Front sparked street protests when it said in an abrupt about-face that it would run candidates in elections set for May 20.

When the Popular Front took power after Ceausescu was toppled, leaders pledged to disband the movement after guiding Romania to democratic government.

Opposition parties want elections to be postponed and a broad-based transition government, including Popular Front supporters, to be formed.

"May 20 is too soon for elections. We need more time to organize and are seeking a postponement until August or September," Peasants Party spokesman Valentin Gabrielescu said.

"Our intention is to have a neutral government immediately. This is a Communist government," he said.

The three parties have called for a mass anti-Popular Front demonstration today outside the Foreign Ministry.

毛泽东的罪名也是屠杀六千万人民，稿费存款超过一亿人民币！

人干什么都可以，最怕就是脑残了！

尤其是被别人洗得脑残的脑残！

被“特别军事法庭”判处死刑并迅速处决，罪名为屠杀六万人民、海外存款超过10亿美元（这两项指控后来查证系子虚乌有）

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脑残们！白纸黑字，看到了吗？

你实在是人云亦云，什么都不懂，被宣传牵着鼻子走。

知道自己的无知和可怜吗？

Yes, it is.

人死了，当然众恶皆归之。死人是不会跟你计较的。自古皆然！

去骂骂沙皇吧，齐奥比它差远啦！

1989年12月25日，齐奥塞斯库高呼：“自由和独立的罗马尼亚万岁！”随后，他的夫人唱起了《国际歌》：“起来，饥寒交迫的奴隶，起来，全世界受苦的人……”.可见这两位共产党领导人临死还在扯谎。什么‘自由和独立’、什么‘饥寒交迫的奴隶’，事实上，全国只有当权者才有自由（贪污的自由），并且他们早已把多数人变成‘饥寒交迫的人’了——只有少数人享受；多数人却在受苦啊……。