OWN CORRESPONDENT, Bujumbura | Friday 9.00pm.
BURUNDI’S government, opposition and rebels on Thursday wrapped up a third round of talks aimed at ending six years of civil war with an agreement to meet again in January, but with few concrete decisions.
The next round is set for January 18 to continue a peace process begun in June. The third-round gathering, no fewer than 18 delegations, was held behind closed doors in Arusha, northern Tanzania, and lasted 10 days under the mediation of former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere.
No joint statement was released following the talks, which however did produce agreement on the composition of three committees to draft proposals on democracy, security and the nature of the conflict in Burundi, according to the independent news agency Hirondelle.
The participants also settled the controversial issue of who should chair the “peace and security” committee, appointing Father Mateo Zuppi of the Rome-based San Egidio community, which organised secret negotiations in late 1996 and early 1997 between the Bujumbura regime and the main rebel movement, the National Council for the Defense of Democracy. The committee on “democracy and good governance” will be led by a legal adviser of South African President Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Haysom. He is standing in for South African judge Richard Goldstone, former prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, who was unable to accept the position.
The committee on the “nature of the conflict”, which is to begin work in Arusha right away, is led by Armando Emilio Guebuza of Mozambique, head of the ruling Frelimo party’s parliamentary group.
The Nyerere Foundation organising the talks said the fourth round would be devoted to considering proposals from these committees.
The Bujumbura regime, meanwhile, has repeated appeals for a lifting of economic sanctions imposed by nine African countries after Buyoya seized power in a coup in July 1996. The sanctions were designed to force him to negotiate with the rebels and return the tiny central African country to constitutional rule. His regime maintains it has fulfilled all conditions for lifting the sanctions. — AFP