ROMANIAN ORPHANS IN DEMAND NEW RULERS LIFT ADOPTION RESTRICTION

The Record

The Italian government said Wednesday that scores of adoption cases involving Romanian children had been resolved and a special plane would fly Italian couples to the East bloc country this weekend to pick up their new children.

A communique from the Foreign Ministry in Rome said the new Romanian government had lifted a freeze on the adoptions of 130 children by Italians.

In 1987, the hard-line Communist government of President Nicolae Ceausescu froze adoptions by foreign citizens, who had been paying thousands of dollars in fees more in secret to get a child.

The Foreign Ministry said special flights would bring the 110 sets of adoptive parents to Romania to pick up the children.

The first DC-9 is scheduled to carry 50 Italians to Bucharest this weekend to complete the adoption formalities and bring 33 children back to Italy, the ministry said.

Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were executed Dec. 25 after a bloody popular revolt. Under Ceausescu's rule, birth control, abortions, and family planning information were not permitted for women with fewer than five children.

Thousands of couples in the United Kingdom have been telephoning charities and adoption agencies there asking how to adopt orphans from Romania.

The Flanders Scottish Alliance, an Edinburgh-based charity, reported 2,000 calls since New Year's Eve from couples desperate to adopt.