Romanian president Ion Iliescu on Monday firmly confronted PSD leaders, during a meeting at Cotroceni, with two issues the party had avoided within its own analysis of the election results.

Firstly, Ion Iliescu showed more determination than the PSD leadership: he called for the resignation of those PSD deputy chairmen responsible for weak results in the local elections. Adrian Nastase, the party's chairman, had asked them to renounce only the position of local branch leader.

Secondly, Ion Iliescu asked them to no longer postpone the designation of the party's candidate for the presidential elections, nor to delay the internal reformation of the party. He imposed a clear deadline for the PSD's leaders to complete these two tasks, namely July 16th, and seems to have made his future collaboration with the ruling party conditional upon their meeting this deadline. Iliescu subsequently stated he hadn't forced anything upon the PSD, and had merely expressed his personal opinions. Iliescu wanted to suggest that his links with the ruling party are within the Constitutional limits - in other words he did nothing more than express a neutral opinion that could also apply to other parties. At the same time, Ion Iliescu issued another surprising remark: the head of state views the running of Adrian Nastase for president as an accepted fact, while the current premier made no official gesture in this regard. Nastase has only referred to the possibility of his candidacy in the presidential elections in the foreign press.

Sources within PSD, quoted by Mediafax, state that president Iliescu made clear his desire to see the internal reform of the party finalised by July 16th, when another meeting is scheduled at Cotroceni. mirela.luca@zf.ro

Romanian president Ion Iliescu on Monday firmly confronted PSD leaders, du