Former president Nelson Mandela, mediator in the peace process for Burundi, said on Tuesday he was “confident we will have a breakthrough” when talks resume this month in Arusha, Tanzania. “We are very close to signing peace,” he told SABC public radio. He said the two main Hutu rebel movements, the Forces for the Defence of Democracy and the National Liberation Forces, as well as 19 political parties, would attend the July 19-20 talks. “I am confident that we’ll be able to sign the peace agreement on the 20th,” Mandela said, adding that he had secured agreement privately with each of the parties that they would accept “final proposals” to be presented by a “facilitation team.” He stressed however that “what is decided in Arusha is not a decision as far as the people of Burundi are concerned. We are not going to impose decisions on them.” He added: “We will have to go there and say to the people of Burundi, ‘this is what we have decided in Arusha. For this reason, we want you to endorse that.’ We’ll have to … make sure that we reach decisions through a democratic process and that’s what we are going to do.”