Talks aimed at halting almost a decade of devastating civil war in Burundi were still on hold on Wednesday, a day after they were due to start in Tanzania’s commerical capital, an AFP journalist there reported.
Delegations from the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), a Hutu rebel group that has been fighting the small central African country’s Tutsi-led army since 1993, were staying at a beach hotel
just outside Dar es Salaam.
Tanzanian security officials prevented any members of the delegation talking to the media.
Burundi government officials were staying at a separate hotel a few hundred metres down the beach, having arrived on Tuesday evening, when they told journalists they had no details of any itinerary or agenda of the ceasefire talks.
A team of South African mediators was due to head to Dar es Salaam on Wednesday for the talks, according to sources in Pretoria.
Officials in the South African and Burundian embassies in Dar es Salaam, as well as the foreign ministry there, were unable to provide any details of the negotiations or why they had been delayed.
”Negotiations for peace do not have a rigid programme,” commented one South African diplomat.
The South African team will be headed by Welile Nhlapo, former South African ambassador to the Organisation of African Unity, special presidential envoy to central Africa’s Great Lakes region, and currently head of the Presidential Support Unit, sources said.
”The technical talks this week will be on a bilateral basis, with each group examining a text prepared by a technical team,” said a South African official close to the negotiations.
”The object will be to identify the areas of commonality and to isolate the most problematic issues that will have to be negotiated next week. We will also identify the details that can only be dealt
with once a peace process is underway, so that these do not bog down talks about peace itself.”
South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who will be one of the mediators, is due to arrive in Dar es Salaam on Sunday.
Since 1993, more than 250 000 people have been killed in Burundi’s civil war, which pits the FDD and the National Liberation Forces, another rebel group drawn from the Hutu majority, against the predominantly Tutsi army.
The conflict has escalated considerably in the run-up to the negotiations. – Sapa-AFP