The Romanian parliament on Monday elected Andrei Plesu as foreign minister following the resignation of his predecessor, Adrian Severin, just before Christmas.

Mr Plesu, a writer and non-party figure, is widely respected in Romania for his dissident role before the revolution which toppled Nicolae Ceauscescu in 1989. Our Central Europe reporter, Nick Thorpe, reports.

Andrei Plesu is Romania's second foreign minister in the 13 months since the centrist government came to power.

A writer and philosopher who speaks excellent English and German, he was sent into internal exile under Ceausescu for his dissident activities.

He served briefly as minister of culture from 1990 to 1991 in Romania's first democratically-elected government.

Since then he has kept out of the mainstream of political life, most recently as editor of an intellectual weekly.

In talks with the foreign affairs committee of parliament on Monday he praised the friendship treaties with Ukraine and Hungary signed in the past two years.

Romania failed to be accepted in the first wave of new countries invited to join Nato last July despite a huge diplomatic offensive to persuade the alliance it could play an important role in the stability of eastern Europe.

Mr Plesu's primary task as foreign minister will be to manoeuvre his country into the best possible starting position for a possible second round of enlargement talks, which are expected to start in 1999.