Bucharest  - Romanian President Traian Basescu expressed reservations Wednesday about nominating ethnic German mayor Klaus Johannis to form a new government, citing the need for a person with international financial expertise.

A day after the minority government of Emil Boc of the centrist PD-L failed a no-confidence vote in parliament, Basescu said he was not in principle opposed to the opposition's call for a technocratic cabinet led by Johannis.

Baghdad - Romanian president Traian Basescu arrived on Thursday in Baghdad in an unannounced visit to take part in the withdrawal ceremony for Romanian troops from Iraq.

Romanian forces were to start withdrawing from southern Nassiriya on Thursday.

In August 2003, Romania sent over 5,200 servicemen to Iraq as part of the US-led coalition, of which only 600 soldiers remain in the country to provide intelligence support, Aswat al-Iraq news agency reported.

Bucharest - In a protest move, Romanian President Traian Basescu Wednesday said he would boycott a conference next month in neighbouring Moldova because of political developments there after elections-related unrest in April.

Basescu was to have attended a south-east European conference in the Moldovan capital Chisinau on June 5.

"Because of the events in the post election period in the Republic of Moldova (the trip) would no longer be realized," the president's representatives declared Wednesday evening in Bucharest.

Bucharest - Romanian President Traian Basescu and Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu embarked Wednesday on a whirlwind tour of five countries to review the Georgian-Russian conflict and its effects on the region.

In just two days, the Romanian duo were to visit the Ukraine, Moldava, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, meeting with their counterparts to review developments in the wake of the conflict in Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia.

In Kiev, Basescu is to meet Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko to start the series of top-level meetings.

Rome - Romanian President Traian Basescu on Thursday told Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that Bucharest disapproved of Rome's policies toward the ethnic Roma, including their fingerprinting.

"The Romanian government does not approve, I repeat, does not approve of part of a large part of the measures of the Italian government," Basescu said at news conference with Berlusconi in Rome.

Basescu was referring to a census of ethnic Roma - known colloquially as gypsies - ordered by the Italian government which also involves fingerprinting, including children.