By Mirela Roman

BUCHAREST, April 21 (Reuters) - A Jewish rights group criticized wartime Nazi ally Romania on Wednesday for failing to investigate and prosecute suspected local war criminals.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed during World War Two in Romania, but as recently as last year Romanian officials denied the Holocaust ever took place in the Balkan country, prompting a diplomatic row with Israel.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center said in report that Romania had failed to take practical steps to investigate war crimes and refused to cancel pardons granted to two former colonels convicted of involvement soon after the war.

"Ever since democracy in Romania, there has not been a single initiative to investigate, let alone prosecute, any of the numerous unprosecuted Romanians who actively participated in the crimes of the Holocaust," Efraim Zuroff, the centre's chief Nazi hunter, said in a statement.

Last year the centre launched a hunt for Romanian war criminals by bringing to the country "Operation Last Chance", which has already exposed several war criminals in the Baltics.
The operation invites citizens to identify suspects and then hands them to local courts. Zuroff said the centre would send Romanian officials a list of suspects in six to eight weeks.
He said he was especially concerned at the lack of a response from Romania's general prosecutor, Ilie Botos, to a request to scrap pardons granted to two convicted war criminals.

Zuroff said ex-colonels Radu Dinulescu and Gheorghe Petrescu were convicted by postwar Romanian communist courts of playing instrumental roles in the deportation and persecution of Jews in the summer and autumn of 1941.

Dinulescu imposed an order forcing Jews to wear yellow stars and Petrescu ordered the seizure of Jewish property, but they were pardoned in 1997 and 1998, Zuroff said. The Romanian Supreme Court granted their appeals, accepting their arguments that they were not direct participants in killings.

Zuroff said prosecutor had not replied to the centre's January 5 request to have those pardons overturned.

"They have to cancel these rehabilitations, it's absolutely outrageous," Zuroff told Reuters by telephone from Jerusalem. "Romania is silent and this is the best way to make sure nothing ever happens," he said.

A statement from Botos's office said it was ready to consider reversing the pardons if Jewish organisations or Romanian officials presented documents proving Dinulescu and Petrescu were directly involved in persecuting Jews.

According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust some 420,000 people from Romania's pre-war Jewish community of 750,000 perished, including more than 100,000 Jews from Transylvania -- then under Hungarian rule -- who were deported to Auschwitz.
In an effort to polish its image ahead of joining NATO this year and the European Union in 2007, Romania banned fascist symbols but the ex-communist country has done little to investigate possible war crimes.

After last year's diplomatic row with Israel, Romania agreed to a series of measures, including setting up a commission to bring light to its World War Two record.

(Additional reporting by Antonia Oprita).