President Ion Iliescu on Saturday reversed a decision to ban the Communist Party, calling it a ``hasty decision,'' and instead said the issue will be decided in a national referendum. Iliescu responded to widespread protests Friday by announcing that the Communist Party, the sole ruler of Romania from 1948 until last month, had been outlawed. In a nationwide television and radio broadcast, Iliescu said the governing National Salvation Front had been criticized for the action, and he said the people will decide the fate of the Communists in a Jan. 28 referendum. ``It was a hasty decision, contrary to the democratic spirit,'' Iliescu said of Friday's announcement. Iliescu complained that popular pressures had even led some Front members to consider resigning. ``Then we realized that in this way, we would leave an open road to anarchy and chaos in the country. which would be a genuine national disaster,'' said Iliescu, who took office after the popular revolution that ousted Ceausescu. ``We need the massive support of the whole country.'' ``The Communist Party self-destructed or was removed from political life on Dec. 22,'' he added, referring to the day dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown. ``The Front is against any leading role of any party. We are in a dramatic moment because we inherited an extremely difficult decision from the dictatorship. We need patience, wisdom and unity,'' he said. The Jan. 28 referendum also will include the question of whether to reinstitute the death penalty, which was abolished by the revolutionary leadership after the executions of Ceausescu and his wife, Elena. There have been nationwide calls to bring back the death penalty by those who feel life imprisonment is too lenient a punishment for crimes committed by Ceausescu cronies as well as by members of the Securitate, Ceausescu's dreaded special police. Police said 11 Securitate members will stand trial Monday in Timisoara, the birthplace of the revolution, where street protests of official foot-dragging led the army to assume control Friday night. The army controlled the city, the birthplace of Romania's revolution, on Saturday after local leaders were forced to resign amid street protests demanding the ouster of Communists from the revolutionary government. The army takeover apparently was an administrative measure and did not mean the region was under martial law. The army's support was crucial to Ceausescu's overthrow. Shooting continued until Friday in Timisoara and the city of Arad near the Hungarian border, between army units and members of Ceausescu's Securitate, the Yugoslav state news agency Tanjug reported. Thousands of people took to the streets on Friday in Bucharest, Timisoara and Brasov to demand reinstatement of the death penalty for Securitate members and to protest the participation of Communists in the interim government. No demonstrations were reported in Romania on Saturday. Lorin Fortuna, the leader of Timisoara's local National Salvation Front council, resigned after demonstrators complained the council was doing nothing about Securitate forces being held, according to a police official who identified himself only as Capt. Streza. The Securitate defendants to be tried in public on Monday in response to the popular pressure include a general, whom Streza did not name. The army took power to guarantee law and order and uninterrupted municipal services until elections planned by Jan. 19, Streza said in a telephone interview, quoting Maj. Gen. Gheorghe Popescu, commander of the armed forces in Timis county. The county's chief city is Timisoara. A new administrative council will be elected by representatives of factories and other organizations and institutions within the region, according to a Tanjug report. All leading members of Romania's Communist Party are under arrest for investigation of their role in the regime run with an iron hand by Ceausescu, who was overthrown Dec. 22 and executed Christmas Day. The Ceausescus' three-hour trial at an undisclosed location 60 miles from Bucharest was described Saturday in the newspaper Libertatea, which carried an interview with Niki Tedorescu, whom it identified as their attorney. ``They refused any cooperation with us. They did not understand what we said,'' Tedorescu recalled. ``Ceausescu kept repeating that he did not recognize the tribunal.'' ``They denied they had any property, or any luxury property,'' said Tedorescu, who was interviewed at a military hospital where he was recovering from a bullet wound received in the fighting in Bucharest. After his overthrow, Romanian media reported the feudal splendor in which the Ceausescu family lived while their countrymen did without the most basic commodities. ``I didn't expect them to be so uneducated,'' Tedorescu said. ``Both of them, but especially her (Mrs. Ceausescu), were disobeying all the laws of grammar.'' Mrs. Ceausescu was touted by the regime as a key intellectual with major scientific achievements. Officially, she held a doctorate in chemistry. ``I was surprised they looked so well, even in the state they were in, trembling with fear. I thought that in spite of their age, they looked better than me, and I am much younger.'' Asked his last words to Ceausescu after the death sentence was passed, Tedorescu answered: ``According to the law, I asked him if he objected to the (death) sentence, and he indicated no. He was convinced in my opinion that he would not be executed.'' The Ceausescus were executed shortly after the trial.
