BUCHAREST (AP) - A key party in Romania’s governing coalition agreed Saturday to back the month-old government’s reform agenda, averting a crisis that could have forced new elections.

Humanist Party Chairman Dan Voiculescu said his party would remain a part of the Cabinet for the sake of political stability as the country prepares to join the EU in 2007. President Traian Basescu had criticized the party for allying itself with both the government and the opposition Social Democrats.

The Humanists responded by threatening to quit the governing coalition. The party’s 30 lawmakers are critical to the Cabinet’s survival in an almost evenly divided parliament. Basescu said he was considering organizing early parliamentary elections to strengthen his coalition.

“The Humanist Party considers that a democratic and reformist government must be allowed to work peacefully,” the party said in a statement. Voiculescu added, however, that the party would respect agreements with its former allies in the opposition.

The Humanists campaigned alongside the Social Democrats before November’s election and its lawmakers voted to make Social Democrats the heads of the two chambers of Parliament. Days later, they left the Social Democrats and decided to support a Liberal-leaning government.

Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu was scheduled to meet Voiculescu today to work out details of the Humanists’ role in government.

In another sign of tensions within the government coalition, two top local party officials from the ruling Justice and Truth Alliance resigned to protest the appointment of an ethnic Hungarian to head a local government in the central province of Covasna. The party representing ethnic Hungarians is also a member of the ruling coalition, and Tariceanu defended the appointment as normal.