Former allies fail to agree truce in Romanian feud

ROMANIA:Romania slipped further into political crisis yesterday as its ruling parties failed to agree a truce in their bitter feud and a parliamentary commission completed a report that could recommend the impeachment of President Traian Basescu.

After meeting Mr Basescu for emergency talks, his Democratic Party (PD) said fresh elections were the best way to break the current impasse - a proposal that was flatly rejected by the National Liberal Party (PNL) of prime minister Calin Tariceanu.

The two men, who came to power on an anti-corruption ticket in late 2004 and led Romania into the EU this year, are now locked in a struggle that analysts say could paralyse the country's reform drive and prevent it receiving its full allocation of funds from Brussels.

Mr Tariceanu's allies and the left-wing opposition are currently putting the PD's interior minister and justice minister under huge pressure to resign, and a foreign intelligence chief appointed by Mr Basescu last year was forced to quit in a phone-tapping scandal this week.

For his part, the president is refusing to approve the prime minister's nomination for foreign minister and has denounced his former ally for launching a witch-hunt against PD members and forming an unholy alliance with the ex-communists, whom they ousted back in 2004.

"As far as the PD is concerned, the solution is early elections," said PD leader Emil Boc.

"The solution in a democracy is not backstage manoeuvring, but going back to the people as the only entity able to give a parliamentary majority and a stable government," he said.

Mr Boc said Mr Tariceanu was trying to purge PD members from the cabinet and perhaps forge an alliance with the opposition PSD, which sprang from the wreckage of Romania's communist party and dominated the country's politics for 15 years after the 1989 revolution, winning along the way a reputation for rampant corruption.

"If the National Liberal Party and the premier want to govern alongside the Social Democratic Party, they should do it clearly and explicitly, rather than, as we see now, by attempting to remove the PD from government minister by minister," Mr Boc insisted.

Mr Tariceanu, a slick former businessman, failed to attend yesterday's talks with Mr Basescu, a former sea captain whose blunt speaking and populist touch have made him Romania's most popular politician.

Crin Antonescu, one of the Mr Tariceanu's deputies in the PNL, rejected the idea of a snap election, saying parliament and the government, not Mr Basescu, would resolve the current crisis.

The opposition has accused Mr Basescu of exceeding his powers by repeatedly meddling in the running of the state, and a commission is due to deliver a report to the Constitutional Court today on whether he should be impeached.

If the court allows the impeachment motion to proceed, it will be debated in parliament and then go to a national referendum - which Mr Basescu is likely to win.