Bloodshed and widespread violence were averted yesterday as eleventh-hour negotiations between miners and the Romanian government ended in agreement.
Trucks and buses took thousands of militant workers back to the Jiu Valley and other regions. Armed with irons bars and Molotov cocktails, they had vowed to besiege parliament and government offices to keep the mines open and their jobs safe.
The Prime Minister, Mr Radu Vasile, rushed to an area near the coal-mining region yesterday morning for tense four-hour talks with union leaders. President Emil Constantinescu had said a state of emergency would be declared if the 10,000 miners continued their march on the capital. Army and police reinforcements were called in to confront them.
Earlier yesterday Romania experienced a lull in fighting which had left many in hospital overnight with head injuries after iron bars and Molotov cocktails were used in pitched battles between miners and police.
Wearing woollen balaclavas and eating dry loaves of bread, thousands of miners huddled near icy roadsides as an uneasy peace ensued. Many miners waved their hands in the victory sign and sang patriotic folk songs as they sat on boulders and in grassy fields awaiting instructions from their leader, Mr Miron Cosma, about their march on Bucharest
The miners had ignored a court order declaring their strike illegal. They are demanding a 35 per cent increase in monthly pay now equivalent to $230, more than twice the average wage in one of poorest ex-communist countries in eastern Europe. The government plans to close 140 mines this year as part of restructuring measures.
This week's violence caused the resignation of Romania's interior minister and endangers a wide range of privatisation and restructuring reforms encouraged by financial institutions.
Earlier, in a televised speech to the nation, a solemn President Constantinescu said if the miners continued to march on Bucharest, "there is no alternative but to take this action". A state of emergency would give the authorities power to arrest without charges. "The situation is a difficult one, but if further disruption and violence occur, Romania will be nothing." A former president, Mr Ion Iliescu, accused Mr Constantinescu and ruling the coalition government of "jeopardising the reform process by failing to lead the country in a firm manner and a failure to understand the needs of the workers".
Under Mr Iliescu's presidency, hordes of miners invaded Bucharest in 1990 and 1992, causing the resignation of then prime minister, Mr Petre Roman.
The miners were cheered by local people along their 200km route from the Jiu Valley. But they are viewed with fear and hostility by Bucharest residents, who have vivid memories of two miners' rampages in the early 1990s which left public buildings devastated and culminated in the resignation of the government.
About 10,000 protesters, mainly students and academics, filed silently through Bucharest city centre yesterday to denounce the miners' march. Participants, including Mayor Viorel Lis, formed a human chain, carried aloft a banner reading "Democracy and Reform, not Dictatorship" and demanded Mr Cozma's arrest.