Romanian coal miners returned home Saturday, ending three days of violent disturbances over economic conditions here, but further confrontation seemed possible as President Ion Iliescu postponed indefinitely a promised visit to coal fields this week.
State radio, meanwhile, announced the start of a widespread strike by the 200,000-member Mining Trade Union Confederation, the Associated Press reported. In calling the strike for more money, the union, which does not represent the Jiu Valley miners who protested here this week, complained that they had gotten the lion's share of government subsidies.Saturday night, Prime Minister Petre Roman, who resigned when the miners' protests turned to rioting, told the ruling National Salvation Front that he would not be part of a new coalition government. The front had asked him to form a new cabinet.
The final clashes to wrack this capital this week came at dawn Saturday, when riot police used tear gas and firecrackers to break up a small demonstration of about 1,000 miners and anti-government demonstrators in central University Square.
After breaking through barricades around the square, the police easily herded the last of the miners to the city train station, from which 16 carloads of exhausted miners departed at about 9 a.m.
The violence this week left three dead and more than 200 injured. The dead included 23-year-old engineering student Andrei Frumusanu, who was shot during the first night of violence Wednesday.
He was buried Saturday at the cemetery for heroes of the 1989 Romanian revolution that ended the dictatorship and life of Nicolae Ceausescu. Frumusanu's parents told a large crowd of mourners that their son had gone to Victory Square only to watch and was to have been married in a week.
Roman's deputy prime minister in charge of economic reform called the miners' rampage this week a "coup attempt" by pro-communist forces. The minister, Adrian Severin, said the miners had been manipulated by former communists in the bureaucracy and other institutions who fear losing their positions and privileges.
Severin said there were already signs of capital flight by foreign investors panicky over the miners' protests, and appealed to international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, and to Western governments to increase aid to Romania to keep the country stable.
"Obviously all of these events have had their bad effect," Severin said. "We're afraid of this panic by foreign investors."