Leaders of several African countries meeting in Tanzania’s economic capital on Monday warned Burundi’s two main rebel groups that measures would be taken against them if they continued to thwart efforts to end almost a decade of civil war in the tiny central African nation.
After a long day of closed-door talks, the leaders warned the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) and the National Liberation Forces (FNL) that ”appropriate measures” would be taken against them if they remained ”recalcitrant” when another summit meeting is held in 30 days.
In a final communique at the end of the summit, they did not spell out what measures were envisaged.
Ignited in 1993, the conflict, which has claimed the lives of more than a quarter of a million people, pits a variety of rebel groups drawn from the country’s large Hutu majority against an army dominated by the Tutsi minority.
Attending the summit were presidents Pierre Buyoya of Burundi, Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. Also present were South African former president Nelson Mandela, who has largely ceded his lead mediator’s role to current Deputy President Jacob Zuma, and ministers from Kenya, Rwanda and Zambia.
But in what conference officials called ”an encouraging step” on Monday, the leaders of two lesser Hutu rebel groups in Burundi formalised a ceasefire agreement. Jean-Bosco Ndayikengurukiye, the leader of a wing FDD, and Alain Mugarabona who leads a branch of the FNL, signed ceasefire accords with Burundi’s president, Pierre Buyoya.
The two men, however, are not thought to command significant numbers of troops actually fighting in Burundi. After a series of negotiations with Burundi’s transitional government in August, Ndayikengurukiye paved the way for Monday’s ceasefire deal by signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Bujumbura regime.
He had led the FDD proper between June 1998 and October last year, when the movement’s commanders ousted him. The bulk of the FDD, which has between 8 000 and 10 000 fighters in Burundi and is now led by Pierre Nkurunziza, also held some talks with the Bujumbura delegation in August, but then abandoned the negotiating table, accusing the South African mediation team of bias.
The main wing of the FNL, led by Agathon Rwasa, has not entered into discussions with the interim government, insisting it will only talk to the army. Despite the secondary nature of Monday’s ceasefire signatories, the summiteers described the development as ”an encouraging step in restoring peace, security and stability in Burundi”.
The deal also commits Ndayikengurukiye and Mugarabona to the key instrument of Burundi’s peace process, the Arusha Accord, a political power-sharing agreement signed in northern Tanzania in 2000. Informed sources close to the talks said the main subjects of the heads of states’ deliberations were what action, if any, to take against those rebel groups seen as shunning the peace process, and the formalising of protocols reached in recent weeks with the secondary rebel leaders, whose military strength on the ground is thought to be negligible.
”What they say they want is reasonable,” European Union envoy Aldo Ajello said of the rebels’ core demands, which include a reform of the army to include Hutus in its officer class. ”But there is no way they can get what they say they want if they don’t negotiate,” Ajello added, saying the FDD’s criticisms of the South African mediators were not reason enough to boycott the talks. – Sapa-AFP