Bujumbura, Burundi | Sunday
BURUNDI mediator Nelson Mandela is on the verge of announcing a major breakthough in efforts to end the eight-year-old civil war in the small, densely populated central African country, officials said.
Mandela is expected to make the announcement at a summit soon of all Great Lakes heads of state, Burundi presidential spokesman Appolinaire Gahungu told reporters late on Saturday.
He had first however, to put his proposed solution to the protracted and complicated Burundi crisis to other partners in the peace process, Gahungu said.
“But Mandela is optimistic on all fronts,” he added, speaking at the airport here on the return from South Africa of Burundi President Pierre Buyoya.
The president, who held extensive talks with Mandela in Johannesburg Thursday and Friday, told reporters the mediator had assured him “he was optimistic that in the coming days we will have a solution to the outstanding issues.”
Issues still to be resolved in the peace process relate to a ceasefire and to the composition of a multi-party transitional government that is envisaged will rule Burundi for three years before democratic elections are held.
Two Hutu rebel groups, the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) and the National Liberation Forces (FNL), have rejected an August 28, 2000 peace accord signed in Arusha, Tanzania, by the Burundian government and the opposition. They have recently stepped up their attacks on Bujumbura.
In Johannesburg on Friday, Mandela said Gabonese President Omar Bongo was “making progress” in ceasefire discussions with the FDD and the FNL.
He also announced that he is to meet next month with FDD leader Jean-Bosco Ndayikengurukiye. “We are making progress and we are going to have a breakthrough,” Mandela said.
Burundi’s civil war pits the Tutsi-dominated army against Hutu rebel movements. The fighting has claimed the lives of some 200_000 people, mostly civilians. – AFP
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