(Initially published in www.romania-report.ro - May 6, 2005)
WASHINGTON, May 6 -- Romania's foreign minister said Friday his government would keep its troops in Iraq supporting postwar operations despite the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists.
"We will not yield to blackmail," Foreign Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu said. "What is not at stake is Romanian foreign policy." Winding up a visit to Washington, he said plans for relocating some U.S. troops now in Germany to Romania were proceeding.
A US delegation is expected to go to Romania and also to Bulgaria within two weeks to discuss the shift.
Romania is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization "and we've had discussions and I think we will continue to have them concerning what kind of presence we will have in Europe,"
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday after a meeting with Ungureanu. "It's a very important process that we are going through of the repositioning of our forces, but it's something that really can't be rushed," she said.
The Romanian minister met also with Stephen Hadley, who heads the White House's National Security Council, and had talks at the Pentagon and with members of Congress.
Romanian President Traian Basescu said Monday the journalists kidnapped March 28 were alive. Their captors threatened last week to kill them if Romania failed to withdraw its 800 troops from Iraq.
Basescu said authorities were doing all they could to free the journalists -- Ovidiu Ohanesian, Marie-Jeanne Ion and Sorin Miscoci. He made no mention of their Iraqi-American translator, Mohammed Monaf, who was kidnapped with them.
The foreign minister, at a breakfast with reporters Friday at the Romanian ambassador's residence, declined to discuss any efforts to win their release.
Source: The Herald Sun
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