Word: escu
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President Nicolae Ceauşescu had to postpone the opening of the Tenth Congress of Rumania's Communist Party for two days in order to give workmen time to take down the American flags on the city's street lamps and replace them with substitute banners in honor of the guest delegations from 66 countries. The new decorations, however, could not paper over Rumania's deep disputes with the Soviet Union. As a result, the congress turned into an extraordinary confrontation between Rumania's policy of forming ties with the West and Moscow's rigid...
Marathon Speech. The 1,915 delegates and some 150 foreign guests, including representatives from Cuba and North Viet Nam, gathered in Bucharest's Palace of Culture, a striking futuristic building that was completed only this year. Though Ceauşescu emphasized his evenhanded approach in the Sino-Soviet dispute by sending an invitation to Peking, the Chinese refused to attend. Apparently, they could not accept his precondition that while in Bucharest they refrain from polemics against other Communist nations. Foreign guests were whisked about in gleaming black Mercedes-Benz limousines, which have replaced Soviet-made Chaikas as the official...
...marathon five-hour opening speech, Ceauşescu reiterated his departures from Kremlin orthodoxy. A major point was economics. The Soviets wish to bring about a greater consolidation with Comecon, the Communist counterpart of the European Common Market. But Ceauşescu wants to widen trade relations and draw on the West's technical and financial strength. Declared the Rumanian leader: "The intensification of economic collaboration must allow the ever stronger development of each national economy. It must be based on respect for the independence and sovereignty of each socialist state...
Ceauşescu also denounced interference by an outside power in the affairs of another country. As a reflection of his canny Balkan diplomacy, Ceauşescu addressed his remarks to the Western imperialists, but the Soviets must have realized that the words also applied to them: "Imperialism disregards the national interests of the peoples, brutually encroaches on their sovereign rights." Ceauşescu even remarked that Rumania has civilian defense units trained to "fight for the defense" of their homeland -a hint that Rumania would not be as easy to invade as Czechoslovakia...
...Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev stayed home. In his place, Moscow sent a delegate of lesser rank: Konstantin Katushev, party secretary in charge of dealing with foreign ruling parties. At 42, Katushev is, nonetheless, a rapidly rising figure in the Kremlin, and he undertook a spirited rebuttal to Ceauşescu the next day. For openers, he took a rather startling swipe at the "perfidious tactics of 'bridge building' to the West." Its only purpose, he said, is "to drive a wedge between the socialist countries...