Communist Party leader Egon Krenz announced Friday that five members of the party's ruling Politburo would step down, and he appealed to East Germans to stay in the country. In a television address, Krenz promised political and economic reforms and told East Germans:
"Trust our policy of renewal! Your place, dear fellow citizens, is here. We need you."(BU) VIENNA, Austria - Thousands of demonstrators in Bulgaria held on Friday the first large pro-reform rally in the country's post-World War II history. Diplomatic sources in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, estimated that as many as 9,000 people joined in the demonstration on the last day of a 35-nation conference on protecting the environment.
One diplomat reached by telephone from Vienna said the demonstrators chanted "democracy" and "glasnost" in a peaceful rally that lasted about 40 minutes.
(BU) PRISTINA, Yugoslavia - Security forces clashed Friday with crowds of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo province where at least three people were killed during violent protests earlier this week. Street fights between police and crowds ranging from 70 to 500 people were reported in Pristina, the Kosovo capital, and in Podujevo and Suva Reka.
The ethnic Albanians, who form a majority in Kosovo, are protesting the trial of the former provincial Communist Party chief and 14 other ethnic Albanian leaders. They are accused of engaging in "counterrevolutionary activity" to win Kosovo's independence from Yugoslavia. Kosovo is a province in Serbia, Yugoslavia's largest republic.
(BU) VIENNA, Austria - Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu has fired the planning chief for the state economy and the foreign minister in another shakeup of top-level jobs, Romania's Agerpres news agency reported Friday.
Ceausescu, 71, is the architect of a crash industrialization program that has resulted in investment bottlenecks, rationing of basic foods and increased exports to repay the Western debt.