Romania Agrees to Human Rights Talks With U.S.

President Nicolae Ceausescu agreed Sunday to hold regular talks with the United States about Romania’s human rights performance after Secretary of State George P. Shultz warned that unless the Communist regime eases the repression of its people, it could lose vital U.S. trade concessions.

A senior U.S. official said Ceausescu agreed to the new round of diplomatic consultations, although he defended his record on human rights and denied charges of religious persecution.

Shultz was closeted with Ceausescu for almost half of the little more than six hours he spent in Bucharest on the first official visit in almost four years of a secretary of state to the maverick member of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.

The senior U.S. official, who asked not to be identified by name, said that Shultz “very fully laid out” the mood in Congress and said that unless Romania changes its human rights policy, the lawmakers are likely to cancel Bucharest’s most-favored-nation trade status which allows the Communist regime to sell goods to the United States on the same terms as other friendly nations. Without that status, Romanian goods would be subject to high tariffs.

Loss of the concessions, which Bucharest has enjoyed for 10 years, would almost certainly result in increased belt-tightening in one of the most austere economies in Europe.

To underline the point, Shultz delivered to Romanian Foreign Minister Ilie Vaduva a letter from House Republican leader Robert H. Michel (Ill.) explaining congressional concerns about Romanian human rights policies. The senior official said that Shultz had urged Michel to write to Vaduva, whom the congressman knew several years ago before he became foreign minister.

The official said that the new talks, to be conducted through the embassies in Washington and Bucharest, would cover the wide range of human rights abuses. But he added that most of the pressure from Congress surrounds the treatment of several sects of evangelical Christians, such as the Church of the Nazarene, the Seventh-day Adventists and some Baptists. U.S. critics have charged the regime with blocking importation of Bibles, destroying churches and jailing believers.

Sects Not Registered

Ceausescu told Shultz that the sects involved are “illegal” because they are not registered with the government. He said that the Romanian Orthodox, Roman Catholic and many Protestant denominations are legally sanctioned and are operating without harassment.

“I’m not going to tell you they have real freedom of religion--they don’t,” the U.S. official said. “But the churches do have a certain legal status.”

He added that the Administration is also concerned about repression of Romanians for reasons other than religious ones.

Another senior official said, however, that Washington hopes to use quiet diplomacy in other cases to avoid “creating a situation where people find it difficult to yield because they are being asked to do so in public.”

Ceausescu Looked Frail

Ceausescu, who has been rumored to be in failing health, appeared thin and frail to reporters who saw him during a brief ceremonial greeting to Shultz. But the senior official, who has met Ceausescu, described him as “vigorous . . . alert . . . sparkling” despite an apparent loss of weight.

Shultz described the talks as “candid, frank and quite worthwhile.” The first two words are diplomatic euphemisms for sharp disagreements.

Ceausescu said that U.S.-Romanian relations “could be better.” Shultz remarked, “I think the President said it well--they could be better.”

Shultz flew to Bucharest after an overnight stop in West Berlin. After his talks with Ceausescu, he went on to Budapest, Hungary, where he is scheduled to meet today with Hungarian officials including Communist Party leader Janos Kadar.

‘Differentiation Policy’

U.S. officials said that by visiting Romania and Hungary while ignoring other nations of the Warsaw Pact, Shultz hopes to demonstrate the Reagan Administration’s “differentiation policy,” which focuses on the differences among the Soviet Union’s closest allies.

The United States applauds Romania’s relatively independent foreign policy while criticizing its internal repression. Conversely, Washington is intrigued by Hungary’s relatively unfettered economy, although it generally finds nothing to praise in the regime’s Moscow-line foreign policy.

Romania permits about 20,000 persons a year to emigrate, a substantial figure for a relatively underpopulated country of 22.4 million. But most of the emigrants are Jews and ethnic Germans. Other Romanians face difficulties when they try to leave the country.

A Romanian source noted that the Bucharest government conforms to the requirements of a U.S. law that denies most-favored-nation trade status to any Communist country that restricts Jewish emigration. The Romanian source accused Washington of “escalating” its human rights demands after Romania met the statutory requirements.

Administration Chided

The source, who apparently reflects Ceausescu’s views, also chided the Administration for permitting Congress to influence its foreign policy.

Romania is in the midst of an almost unprecedented attempt to pay off its foreign debt. That policy imposes severe austerity on the population because the government channels much of the nation’s production into exports and has imposed severe limits on imports, especially of consumer goods.

If Romania forfeits its most-favored-nation status, it would lose much of the hard currency it earns from exports to the United States, making its economic problems even more severe.