Bucharest - Romania's interior minister resigned last night as President Emil Constantinescu warned that if the government gave in to demands by striking miners, the country's post-communist democracy would be put at risk.
Government and opposition leaders later told President Constantinescu to declare a state of emergency if striking miners continued their violent protest march to the capital Bucharest, the Justice Minister, Mr Valeriu Stoica, said last night on television.
The president's warning and resignation, without explanation, by the Interior Minister, Mr Gavril Dejeu, came after the miners, who are marching on the capital, again broke through a police road block, using clubs and stones.
The miners, helped by local residents, broke through thousands of police and shrieked with joy as they moved from Costesti towards Bucharest, 190 kilometres to the southeast.
Hospital sources in the area said about 50 police and 20 miners and local villagers were being treated for various injuries, some hit by rocks, others suffering from inhalation of tear gas. "We have to go to Bucharest. We shall go on," the miners' leader, Mr Miron Cozma, told exultant miners from the roof of a car near the dismantled barricade.
President Constantinescu told government and opposition politicians: "We no longer face a protest but rather a brutal attack on security forces and on state authority."