Burundi’s President Domitien Ndayizeye and other senior politicians were in Pretoria on Saturday for a fresh round of talks aimed at advancing the peace process in the Central African country, a spokesperson said.
Before leaving Bujumbura, however, Ndayizeye said he will not be playing an active role in the discussions, but will take part only in an advisory capacity.
The tiny Central African state is emerging from more than a decade of war fuelled by ethnic rivalries that has claimed more than 300 000 lives and devastated the country’s economy and infrastructure.
Deputy President Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s mediator for Burundi, is due to meet the parties on Sunday and Monday to try to reach a deal on power-sharing between the Tutsi minority and Hutu majority that could break the deadlock over holding elections before a late October deadline expires.
Leaders from Burundi’s Tutsi minority, which accounts for about 14% of the population, are seeking a 40% quota of elected posts in the country’s future political dispensation, while the Hutus, who make up about 85%, are vying for a straightforward one-man-one-vote system.
The current transitional government, where power is shared between the two ethnic groups, ”is not party to this dispute so it will not take part in the discussions on the future Constitution and the electoral system”, the president told reporters at Bujumbura airport.
The government and Ndayizeye himself, however, has taken part in previous negotiations.
”This time, the role of the government will be advisory … we have agreed all this with Jacob Zuma,” he added.
South African President Thabo Mbeki is also scheduled to weigh in on the parties at the opening of the talks and possibly on the second day to try to wrest agreement on meeting the election deadline, which was agreed at a key power-sharing accord signed in Tanzania in 2000 and confirmed at a recent summit of heads of state overseeing Burundi’s peace process.
South Africa is the main sponsor of this process.
Under the 2000 peace accord, the interim government was led for 18 months by Tutsi Pierre Buyoya, and seconded by Ndayizeye, a Hutu, who took over for the second half of the transition period in May last year.
”President Domitien Ndayizeye and the other Burundi parties arrived on Friday and Saturday. They are busy with their own consultations on Saturday,” said Zuma’s spokesperson Lakela Kaunda.
She added there were no plans for the deputy president to hold talks with the leaders on Saturday as he was in Durban attending a funeral.
Other than Ndayizeye, the talks will be attended by Parliament speaker Jean Minani of the Hutu-dominated Frodebu party, Senator Jean-Baptiste Manwangari of the Tutsi-dominated Uprona party and Pierre Nkurunziza of the former rebel CNDD-FDD group.
Four days of talks brokered by Zuma in late May failed to break the deadlock over holding elections with Ndayizeye insisting that there is too much to be done before elections can be held. — Sapa-AFP