Financiarul

Romania and France will take part in a summit on Roma gypsies to be held in Cordoba, Spain, where a joint statement will be put forward through which both countries pledge to work together for solving Roma gypsies’ problems, said France’s Ambassador in Bucharest Henri Paul on Tuesday evening.

He pointed out that Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi is a ‘friend of his’ and described him as a ’sage’ man whose mission is to serve Romania, declining to comment the Romanian minister’s statements during a previous joint news conference with a French state secretary.

‘I have worked with him extensively while he was Ambassador of Romania in Paris and I am certain that first of all he is a wise man. As for the rest, I believe Romania has a lot of progress to make in order to better integrate particular categories of people that are poorer and are suffering from various deprivations, mainly related to education, as President Traian Basescu said,’ pointed out Henri Paul.

During a meeting with the French State Secretary for European affairs Pierre Lellouche, Baconschi said there are ’some crime-related, physiological, natural problems in some of the Romanian communities’ in France ‘especially regarding the Roma gypsies’.

Later, many organizations fighting for civil rights demanded minister Baconschi’s resignation, who they say was ‘guilty’ of racially prejudiced statements implying that some of the Roma are natural born law-breakers. Ambassador Henri Paul participated on Tuesday evening in an exhibition dedicated to the 130th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Romania, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.