Three Tutsi parties from Burundi agreed to sign a peace accord aimed at ending seven years of ethnic warfare, mediator Nelson Mandela said after talks with the party leaders in Johannesburg. Leaders of the Independent Party of Workers, the Union for Democracy and Economic and Social Development and the National Alliance for Law and Economic Development met Mandela for talks. The Tutsi leaders said they would add their signatures on September 20 in the expectation that a cease-fire agreement would be included in the peace deal. The accord now lacks only the consensus of two leading Hutu rebel fighting groups, the Forces for the Defence of Democracy and the National Liberation Forces, which have boycotted the two-year negotiations to end the war.
They have been invited to the September 20 meeting, which will also be attended by various African heads of state. Mandela said French President Jacques Chirac had agreed to convene a conference to raise funds for Burundi’s reconstruction. He will address the United Nations Security Council on September 25, he said, adding: “I will be taking them some very good news.”