New Regime Revokes Ceausescu Policies : Recovery: One-party rule will be abolished, and the economy will be based on ‘profitability.’

The new provisional Romanian government moved quickly Friday to consolidate its authority throughout the country, naming new ministers and revoking policies of the regime of executed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

The army reported that the country was now fully under its control, although pockets of resistance by the fanatical presidential guard called the Securitate remained.

In a decree published in Friday’s edition of Romania Libera, the National Salvation Front issued an eight-point program, amplifying the first published statement of its intentions since it was established one week ago.

Under the decree, the leading role of the Communist Party will be abolished, overturning 40 years of one-party rule here--a rule that was dominated for the last 20 years by an all-embracing police apparatus.

The National Salvation Front repeated its commitment to hold free elections in April, stipulating that under the new system, senior office holders would not be able to serve more than two terms.

The new Romanian flag will be the traditional red, gold and blue tricolor, but with the Communist symbol removed from its center.

The new Romanian economy, the decree said, will be based on “efficiency and profitability,” which many observers believe is a recipe for a free-market system and the dismantling of a highly centralized economy built up by the Ceausescu regime.

Ion Iliescu, the provisional Romanian leader, appointed Gen. Atanasie Victor Stanculescu minister of the economy. Although some Romanians on Friday criticized the choice of an army officer as chief economics minister, Corneliu Bogdan, the government’s spokesman, said Stanculescu had been minister of supply under the former regime and was qualified for the job because of his knowledge in the area of supply, logistics and warehousing.

As a gesture toward the ethnic German and Hungarian minorities--200,000 and 1.6 million, respectively--the front said that rights for minorities would be protected. It also said it would fully respect religious rights and adhere to the human rights agreements of the Helsinki accords.

Under the Ceausescu regime, Hungarian language schools, newspapers and books were either decreased in number or closed down entirely. It was a policy aimed at “Romanianizing” the ethnic minorities and diluting their cultural and political strength. Ceausescu’s policy toward the Hungarian minority brought him to diplomatic loggerheads with Hungary, nominally a Warsaw Pact ally.

The ethnic Germans, centered around Romania’s second-largest city of Brasov, were deprived of similar rights, but unlike the Hungarians, who until recently could not seek refuge in Hungary, the West German government bought the freedom of any German who wanted to leave.

The National Salvation Front, as has many non-Communist or reformist governments in the East Bloc, expressed concern for the environment, pledging to halt investments in industries that could be ecologically damaging.

The government decree also subordinated to the government the military and police.