Burundi’s main rebel group said on Monday it would not turn up for the resumption of ceasefire talks with the government on Tuesday in Tanzania, saying it had not been officially invited.
”The FDD (Forces for the Defence of Democracy) cannot be there tomorrow for logistical reasons,” said the movement’s representative, Lieutenant Gelase Daniel Ndabirabe.
The last round of talks ended on November 8 in a deadlock.
More than 250 000 people have been killed in Burundi’s civil war, which started in 1993 and pits a variety of Hutu rebel groups against an army dominated by the Tutsi minority.
”Not only has the invitation not reached us but what’s more, the (rebel) movement has asked the mediators and especially (chief mediator and South African Deputy President Jacob) Zuma to send this to us two weeks before the start of negotiations,” he said.
”These conditions have not been met. We cannot be there,” he said.
On November 8, FDD leader Pierre Nkurunziza said his movement was willing to pursue the peace process and blamed President Pierre Buyoya for impeding it.
Burundi’s government delegation left Bujumbura for Dar es Salaam on Sunday, saying the resumption of talks aimed at halting almost a decade of devastating civil war had been slated for Tuesday.
There has been no official announcement to this effect from the mediation team, although government spokesman and Communications Minister Albert Mbonerane said a formal invitation had been received.
”The government is going to Dar es Salaam in a bid to make us look bad,” Ndabirabe said.
”They want people to believe that it is the FDD that does not want to negotiate and that they do,” he added.
”It is also to prime donors on the eve of the Geneva meeting on Burundi,” said Ndabirabe.
”In any case, if the new invitation does not mention clearly that there will be negotiations our movement will not go to Dar es Salaam because there will be nothing to do there,” he said.
The FDD wants the new meeting to be used to renegotiate the 2000 Arusha Accord, a blueprint for peace signed in northern Tanzania by leaders across the political spectrum but not by Burundi’s rebel
groups.
On leaving Bujumbura on Sunday, Ambroise Niyonsaba, the government’s lead negotiator, said: ”We are going in the hope of reaching a ceasefire accord before November 25, when there will be a summit of regional heads of state.”
At the last such summit, held in Dar es Salaam on October 8, the heads of state warned they would take ”appropriate measures” against warring parties who failed to agree to a ceasefire within 30 days, when the next summit, now delayed, was supposed to have taken place.
No official date for the next summit has been released.
”The FDD asked the mediation to delay this summit until November 25 but there has been no response yet,” a rebel source who asked not to be named told AFP. – Sapa-AFP