Bucharest, 18 September, 1993

Dear Mr. High Commissioner,

I acknowledge the receipt of your letter of 14 September, 1993 presenting some conclusions and recommendations concerning the yuestion of minorities in my country.

With your permission I should like to reserve my right to make some substantive comments on your letter, but for time being, I would limit myself to a few preliminary remarks.

First, I should like to express my gratitude for your kind words addressed to my Government for the cooperative spirit in which all your requests were met, for the openness with which your questions were answered, and the assistance in providing you with unrestricted access to various sources of information. May I assure you that you can count on the same cooperation and support whenever you will decide to visit Romania again.

Secondly, I note with satisfaction the friendly and constructive manner of your comments and recommendations and I assure you that we shall study them very carefully in a spirit of good will and cooperation.

Last but not least, I should like to inform you that the Council for National Minorities is preparing a draft law on minorities which it hopes to be able to submit to the Government and then to the Parliament early this fall. On the other hand there are good chances that the law on Education will be coted upon by the parliament in the next couple of weeks.

I shall come back to your letter with more comments later on, perhaps at the beginning of October.

In the meantime I have requested the Governmental institutions concerned to study your recommendations and to come up with proposals for their early implementation.

Yours sincerely,

Teodor Melescanu

(s i g n a t u r e)

Minister of State,

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania