Romanian Defense Minister Ioan Mircea Pascu, who signed letters of intent for his country to join NATO think-tanks on air and sea transport, is doing his part to make sure Romania bolsters an image of his country as an “international player.”

And Romania, which took up its own non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council July 1st, and assumed presidency of the council for that month, seems determined to stay in the limelight.

Alone among the new member states, Romania has already taken its own troops and equipment to Iraq and Afghanistan. And bolstering its naval fleet, a second frigate, Regele (King) Ferdinand, is due to be bought from Britain later this year.

Romanian foreign policy is seen at home and abroad as a success story. Years of campaigning for NATO membership, which amounted to nil when Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were admitted in 1999, climaxed in April. And as a NATO member, Romania is already pulling her weight, with 700 combat troops in Iraq and hundreds more peacekeepers in Afghanistan, the Balkans and beyond. While other countries devised strategies for hanging on to deskbased colonels and corrupt procurement practices, Romania went boldly up to the new boss and asked what the company needed. Planes, the boss answered, military transport planes.

ROMANIA, which took up its own non-permanentseat on the UN Security Council July 1st, and assumedpresidency of the council for that month, seems determinedto stay in the limelight

So Romania is rapidly building a fleet of used but still reliable Hercules C-130 transport planes, each of which can seat 1,000 soldiers, albeit not in “Business Class” luxury. With NATO membership has come participation in NATO intelligence committees – once Western doubts about the possible membership of former Securitate, the muchfeared communist era secret police - in the team, had been allayed. Using a tradition of surveillance developed with US and West German technology under the communists, Romania also has a military intelligence unit now in Iraq.

With cooperation within NATO now proceeding apace, Romania is focusin its efforts on the European Union (EU). Prominence in the UN, its diplomats believe, can only help that process.

Iliescu: the quiet revolutionary

As I interview Romanian President Ion Iliescu, he appears more relaxed and humorous than I remember. A smile rarely leaves his face. At 74, he seems to look forward to ending a period of power that has lasted since 1990, with only a four-year break, from 1996 to 2000. In November presidential elections he must step down, and his Social-Democrat (PSD) Party is expected to name current Prime Minister Adrian Nastase as its candidate. Iliescu himself is expected to take over the PSD. An expert in political intrigue, he was the youngest-ever member of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party in 1971. Once a favorite of the dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu – old photographs show them playing tennis together - his star waned when he boldly challenged the master. He was stripped of all political posts and farmed out as director of a technical publishing house, but kept his coffeehouse contacts. When a small group of intellectuals emerged to set up the National Salvation Front in December 1989, to steer – some say hijack – the Romanian Revolution, Iliescu was first among them.

I met President Iliescu in a ceremonial hall of his palace, between his meeting with Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak and a dinner in honor of visiting Egyptian dignitaries. With so much at stake in Iraq, in the aftermath of the hand-over of power to an interim government, a succession of Middle Eastern leaders, starting with King Hussein of Jordan, were dropping into Bucharest.

“I am a head of a state passing through a very difficult period of transition,” he begins modestly, “and we have already accumulated 14 years of experience, since the crushing of a dictatorship.”

Cautious about Iraq role

On Iraq, and Romania’s temporary responsibility at the helm of the UN Security Council, Iliescu is cautious.

“In the debates in the Security Council, there are a lot of common approaches. There can be a common platform for developed cooperation, which is needed in this period of time - even taking into account the difficulties of the US, which has the main responsibility. I think the support of the international community is needed now. And every contribution is welcomed.”

Romania made headlines last year when it supported the hawkish US position on Iraq, against dovish positions by the French and Germans. But the more we talk about Iraq, the clearer it becomes that Iliescu holds a more sophisticated view of the crisis, and of the whole “War on Terror,” than US President George W. Bush.

AT THE NATO SUMMIT Romanian President Ion Iliescu, Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (LEFT TO RIGHT).

“The stability of the world will depend on our capacity to reduce the gap between rich and poor. Even terrorism … is connected to the frustration of different people … to the economic and social situation of poor countries.” The conversation swings to the EU, and Romania and Bulgaria’s hope, or dream, of becoming members in 2007. Is that still realistic? “I hope so. The (poverty) gap between ourselves and the others will not be solved in three years … it’s a question for a much longer period. But we have the experience of longer phases and waves of enlargement. Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland also had large gaps compared to the more developed countries of the EU.”

Postpone next enlargement?

He is well aware of those views within the EU, and even occasionally within the Romanian business community, which suggest that the next wave of enlargement be postponed, perhaps to 2010. But he suggests that such sentiments are less than helpful. “2007 is for us the only game, and the only goal of our efforts. If we shall not be capable to do it in 2007, we shall discuss ... There will be another wave. But we do not want to lose this wave.”

Asked what consequences there would be inside Romania, he is philosophical. “It would not be a tragedy. If we don’t succeed we will simply acknowledge that we have to do more. But we should not speak about that now.”

And what is taboo for the president is taboo for most of society. There is even a stylized clock, in the middle of a roundabout in the Place of the Revolution, counting the days till Jan. 1, 2007. Romania is a country in waiting. It showed 914 days until the hypothetical accession July 1st.

Across the city and in the offices of the prime minister, are paintings by Miro and another by Picasso, which adorn the walls, side-by-side the works of contemporary Romanian artists.

“We are undertaking a huge process of modernization of the society. It’s not a problem of winning a race, it’s a problem of doing what we have to do anyway,” says Adrian Nastase. And he recites a long shopping list: the reform of the economy, of the judiciary, and the fight against corruption.

Dark clouds of corruption

Everywhere you go in Romania, people talk about corruption. Some blame the EU and foreign diplomats, notably the ambassadors of the US, the EU and the UK for mentioning it with every breath. Some blame the media for the same reason. The government acknowledges the problem, but tries to dismiss it as the birth-pain of a market economy. “Seventy percent of respondents in a recent survey said they had heard of corruption from the media, but only 20 percent said they had ever been in a position to bribe someone,” said Cristian Diaconescu, Minister of Justice. “I’m not trying to play it down. But you must remember, this is an election year.”

Nastase recognizes the illness, but says Romania already has the remedy.

“In the last months we’ve updated our anti-corruption law, and a new institution, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has been made fully operational and is very successful … Even if there are many things still to be done in this area, there is a positive process and we have agreed with our colleagues in Brussels on a list of priority measures.”

The hard work of Romanian diplomats in New York and Brussels, and the sacrifices of troops around the world, can only be undermined now by disasters at home, and corruption is the No. 1 candidate. A recent study found Romania more corrupt than Turkey, Iran and Lebanon. In Europe, only Albania and Russia were more corrupt.

Sweeping measures?

The Anti-Corruption Office recently published figures for its first “crop” of officials. The 617 defendants sentenced included one former minister, two advisers of the government’s secretariat, two bankruptcy judges, 139 policemen and 14 customs officers. Critics counter that no serving politician, at a local or national level, has ever been on trial.

Critical voices, too, are not hard to come by in Romania. “We’re making a lot of sacrifices as a country only to provide a good lobby for Romania, which is not appropriate at all,” says Cosmin Gusa, who left a high position in the PSD last year to join the opposition Democratic Party. “A lot of people are negotiating their personal political positions when they are talking about European integration.”

He accuses the present government of passing laws and going to great lengths to polish Romania’s image, but of still being in the hands of “people from the totalitarian past, open to blackmail by others who know what they really did.”

Gusa managed the Democratic Party local election campaign in May, in which the party and its ally, the National Liberal Party, made major gains. He now believes the opposition could win power in Parliamentary elections in November.

If they do, it’s a tribute to the success of Romania’s diplomats, something foreign policy would be unlikely to change.