Romania's nationalist party leader turns pro-Jewish

Described by one newspaper as "the Jean Marie Le Pen of the Carpathians", Romania's extreme nationalist party leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor has long relished his notoriety as xenophobic, racist and in particular anti-Semitic.

He has vehemently denied a Holocaust took place in Romania, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed during World War Two, and has launched countless vitriolic attacks against Jewish leaders.

"Here's the secret of my political success: I say out loud what everybody thinks but has no courage to say," he wrote in his book Aphorisms.

But just months before national elections in November, the leader of the ultra-right and increasingly popular Greater Romania party, says he has had a change of heart.

He unveiled a statue of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in January, says he plans to build a Holocaust museum in Bucharest and wants to travel to Israel to ask for forgiveness at Jerusalem's Wailing Wall.

"I am not an enemy of Israel. I'm not anti-Semitic," he told Reuters. "It was a misunderstanding... maybe it's my fault for not explaining my stance until now."

His critics say he is a wolf in sheep's clothing. The Israeli embassy in Bucharest has accused him of political opportunism and analysts say he is singing a different tune only to lure moderate voters ahead of the elections.

"I don't think it's real," said political analyst Sorin Ionita, executive director of the Romanian Academic Society think tank. "Very few people believe it is."

The Evenimentul Zilei Bucharest daily ran a cartoon showing Mr Vadim Tudor in successive phases of his political career, dressed as Hitler, Stalin, a Muslim fanatic and a rabbi.

Aware of the need to polish his image, Mr Vadim Tudor said he will hire the firm that managed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's election campaign to help him win the presidency this time around.

He has come close. In the 2000 presidential race he came second to President Ion Iliescu with 28 per cent of the vote and lost with 33 per cent in the runoff after nearly all political parties threw their support behind the ruling ex-communists.

Staunchly anti-American and anti-European until recently, he now says he supports Romania's accession to the European Union and Nato.

Vadim Tudor has seen his support rise, especially in the countryside, where people are increasingly impatient with persistent poverty and corruption 14 years after the collapse of communism.

"Other politicians fight like dogs over a bone. Vadim Tudor is brave, he supports the people. From his salary as a senator he feeds the poor," said Marcel Voivodeanu, 47, an electrician in the Carpathian town of Brasov.

Mr Voivodeanu was among more than 1,000 supporters who braved sub-zero temperatures and snow to listen to an hour-long speech by Mr Vadim Tudor when he inaugurated Rabin's statue in an icy Brasov park last month.

A former court poet to communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Mr Vadim Tudor intersperses his speeches with his own verse and lines from the Bible. He now praises the Jewish people for giving the world the Scriptures.

"I will build a Holocaust museum in Bucharest, maybe by Easter of 2005," he said, seated at his desk in the Senate in front of a statue of Napoleon. "We will buy objects and documents. If I am president, it will be a lot easier."

About 400,000 Jews were killed in pogroms and forced labour camps during World War Two in Romania, then a Nazi ally, including more than 100,000 who perished at concentration camps in Transylvania, then under Hungarian rule.

War-time ruler Ion Antonescu, blamed for unleashing the Iron Guard fascist movement on the country's Jewish community, was tried and executed as a war criminal shortly after the war.

But he is still admired by many Romanians as a national hero for attempting to defy the advancing the Soviet army towards the end of the war.

Post-communist Romania has had difficulty dealing with this ugly chapter of its history and Mr Vadim Tudor has capitalised on the underlying tensions.

Many believe that he will now direct his tirades against other minorities such as the Roma, who make up more than 10 percent of the population.

"I expect that he will now turn anti-Gypsy," Mr Ionita said. Mr Vadim Tudor said the Roma, largely impoverished and illiterate, are to blame for his country's bad image abroad and that the state should move in and "educate" them.

"They are like big children," he said. "I respect the gypsy minority. They gave us very good musicians, writers and sportsmen but they are the exception. The majority are beggars and outlaws."