Corneliu Mănescu

Corneliu Mănescu ( born February 8, 1916 in Ploieşti, † 26 June 2000 in Bucharest ) was a Romanian politician and diplomat. He was Foreign Minister from 1961 to 1972 and his home was 1967/68 for a year of the UN General Assembly as president before. During the Romanian Revolution of 1989, he played a major role in opposition to Nicolae Ceauşescu.

Mănescu studied from 1936 to 1940 law and economics at the University of Bucharest; already here, he worked as a journalist. After the conquest of Romania by the Soviet Red Army in 1944 he worked in various positions in government and KP. In 1948 he was appointed deputy defense and held the rank of lieutenant general. In the second half of the 1950s, he was Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Committee. 1960/61, he was briefly ambassador of his native Hungary, but was appointed foreign minister of his country soon. After the end of his term as Romanian foreign minister, he served his country until the early 1980s as an ambassador in major world capitals, such as Paris.

In early 1989, he initiated with five other former leaders of the Communist Party of Romania known as Letter of the Six open letter in which that the Ceauşescu government strongly criticized because of the disregard of civil rights and the desolate economic situation and openly called for reforms. When in December 1989, broke open the uprising against Ceausescu, Mănescu was one of the leading figures in the transitional government.