Obituaries - July 16, 2000

Corneliu Manescu, 84, a former Romanian foreign minister who became a vocal critic of Nicolae Ceausescu and briefly headed the government after the Communist strongman’s ouster. The first East Bloc Communist statesman to be elected president of the U.N. General Assembly, Manescu was forced out of the Romanian government in March 1989, after he joined five other former top party officials in denouncing Ceausescu for human rights abuses and mismanagement of the economy. He was placed under house arrest in April 1989, where he remained until he was chosen in December of that year to lead a transitional government after the ouster of Ceausescu. Born in Ploesti, north of Bucharest, Manescu studied law at Bucharest University before joining the country’s anti-Nazi underground Communist movement. He later became active in the Romanian Workers Party, which became the Communist Party of Romania after Ceausescu took power in 1965. Manescu’s rise through the Communist bureaucracy included stints as deputy defense minister, vice minister of state planning, ambassador to Hungary and foreign minister. He earned world attention in 1967 when he was elected president of the U.N. General Assembly. On June 26 in Bucharest of leukemia.