COSTESTI, Romania (AP) — A Romanian Gypsy leader on Wednesday
compared French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Romania’s pro-Nazi
wartime leader, following the expulsion of hundreds of Gypsies from
France.

Speaking during an annual Gypsy feast held on a hill at the
foots of the Carpathian Mountains, Iulian Radulescu told the
Associated Press that Gypsies — also known as Roma — are being
unfairly expelled from France.

France has sent back about 1,000 Gypsies to Romania and Bulgaria
in recent weeks as part of its crime fighting measures. Sarkozy has
linked Roma to crime, calling the camps in which some of them live,
sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and
prostitution.

There are between 10 million and 12 million Gypsies in the EU,
most living in dire circumstances, victims of poverty,
discrimination, violence, unemployment, poverty and bad housing. An
estimated 1.5 million of them live in Romania, a country of 22
million, which has the largest population of Gypsies in Europe.

Both France and Romania are members of European Union, and under
the rules governing the 27-member bloc its citizens can travel
freely within the union, but the governments are also legally
permitted to send citizens of other EU countries home if they can’t
find work or support themselves.

The expulsions have been criticized from several quarters
including the Roman Catholic Church and the United Nations, and
even some members of Sarkozy’s government.

Dressed in a gray suit and sitting inside a white marquee tent,
Radulescu said that hundreds of Gypsies are paying the price “for
the crimes of the few.”

“It is not right to be expelled if you are a law-abiding
citizen,” the 71-year-old Radulescu said.

Radulescu compared the expulsions to the ones carried out by
Romania’s pro-Nazi dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu, who ruled the
country during the World War II.

Antonescu deported 25,000 Gypsies from Romania to the Soviet
region of Trans-Dniester in 1942. Some 11,000 Gypsies died from
exposure, typhus, starvation and thirst after they were deported
from Romania. A lack of wartime records makes it difficult to
determine the overall number of Gypsies killed during the
Holocaust, but according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, it
is between 220,000 and 500,000.

“Sarkozy is doing what Antonescu did,” Radulescu said. He also
urged Gypsy leaders to try and stop crime within their
communities.

A French foreign ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, dismissed
the comments, saying he declined to enter into “fruitless
debates.”

“We consider that it is an European problem that should be
solved with an European solution,” Valero said.

The issue of expulsion will top the agenda of planned talks
between French Immigration Minister Eric Besson and the Minister
for European Affairs, Pierre Lelouche, who will visit Romania on
Thursday, Valero said.

Romania’s President Traian Basescu sent his adviser Peter
Eckstein to tell the revelers that he supports their freedom of
movement within the European Union, but also urged them to send
their children to school.

At the festival, Gypsies roasted pigs and chicken on open spits,
while children played on merry go rounds and listened to Gypsy pop
and French rap music.

Another Gypsy leader Florin Cioaba told hundreds gathered that
they are being discriminated in Europe.

“There is one set of laws for European citizens and different
laws for the Roma,” Cioaba said.

___

Associated Press writer Alison Mutler in Bucharest, and Daphne
Rousseau in Paris contributed to this report.