Basescu, in the first such apology to the Romany community, as Gypsies are officially addressed, said he was sorry for their prosecution during the Holocaust, the Serbian news agency Tanjug reported Wednesday.

Romania’s leaders have already apologized for the role of the Bucharest regime against Jews during World War II, Tanjug said.

At a ceremony Sunday in Bucharest, Basescu conferred orders on three Romanies who survived the Holocaust.

Basescu recalled that the Romanian regime some 65 years ago deported Gypsies from their homes to die in Nazi camps. As many as 500,000 Romanian Gypsies were killed during World War II.

Official statistics say about 500,000 Gypsies live in Romania but minority experts believe their number is close to 1 million.