Romanian leader denies collaboration

ROMANIA: Romanian president Traian Basescu has denied collaborating with the communist-era secret police, after newly-opened files revealed that a string of leading politicians and media figures spied for dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's Securitate.

Critics of Mr Basescu have persistently accused him of working with the Securitate when he was the captain of communist Romania's biggest commercial ship, and later when he served as a representative of the state shipping company in Belgium.

But Mr Basescu, who ousted the former communists in 2004 on a pledge to root out pervasive corruption, insisted he had never given anything other than standard work reports to his bosses, and had yet to see the file that the feared Securitate compiled about him.

"I did not sign any agreement with the Securitate or give them any information about people," said the former mayor of Bucharest, who hopes to lead Romania into the EU next year after winning praise from Brussels for his fight against crime and graft.

He added: "All I did was report on my trips," to the ship's owner - in his case the Romanian state - "like any other captain. Since the start of my mandate, I have asked to see my file, without any success. Give me this file and I will make it public straight away."

After Ceausescu was toppled and executed in 1989, power was seized by his former communist underlings, who then dominated Romanian politics for most of the next 15 years.

They showed great reluctance to open the old security service files, many of which were allegedly destroyed or disappeared, while ex-Securitate agents continued to work in the intelligence services and made successful careers in business.

Mr Basescu has promised to throw open the files, and the Council for Studying the Securitate Archives is under increasing pressure to speed up checks on politicians, journalists and other public figures.

Several leading politicians and reporters who cultivated reputations as anti-communists have recently been exposed as former collaborators, despite protests from many that the Securitate files are full of false information.

"I want to make sure this process of revealing the files goes all the way," Mr Basescu said. "The longer we wait the worse it will become."