Turmoil In Romania : NEW MAN IN BUCHAREST

Corneliu Manescu, Romania’s new acting leader, is an unlikely reformer who followed an almost textbook career path through the Communist bureaucracy that included stints as foreign minister and ambassador to Hungary and France. Manescu, 73, earned world attention as a diplomat in 1967 when he became the first East Bloc Communist statesman to be elected president of the U.N. General Assembly. Born in Ploesti, in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains north of Bucharest, on Feb. 8, 1916, he studied law at Bucharest University. There, he joined Romania’s anti-Nazi underground Communist movement and later became active in the Romanian Workers’ Party, which became the Communist Party of Romania when President Nicolae Ceausescu took power in 1965. Manescu’s rise through the Communist bureaucracy was quiet and efficient: 1948--deputy defense minister; 1955--vice president of state planning; 1960--ambassador to Hungary; 1961-72--foreign minister; 1977-82--ambassador to France. In March of this year, he joined five other former top party officials in publishing an open letter in the West denouncing Ceausescu for human rights abuses and mismanagement of the economy. He was placed under house arrest in April, where he remained until he was tapped Friday to lead the country, at least through a transitional phase.