/ 26 January 2003

Burundi peace talks start in SA

Peace talks between Burundian President Pierre Buyoya and rebel leaders started in South Africa on Saturday, the first in a series of weekend meetings to shore up ceasefire accords signed last year.

South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, chief mediator in the central African country’s peace process, was hosting the meeting in Pretoria, his representative Lakela Kaunda said in a statement.

Buyoya was on Saturday scheduled to meet the leaders of two small Hutu rebel groups, Jean Bosco Ndayikengunukiye of the National Council for the Defence of Democracy-Forces for the Defence of Democracy, and Alain Mugabarabona of the Palipehutu-Forces for National Liberation.

Both insurgencies are breakaway factions of the main rebel

group, Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), and the second largest insurgency, National Liberation Forces (FNL), and command insignificant numbers of troops in a conflict which has claimed more than 300 000 lives since October 1993.

Ndayikengunukiye and Mugabarabona signed a ceasefire with Buyoya last October. The Pretoria meeting is expected to discuss the finer details of that accord.

On Sunday, Buyoya is scheduled to meet the leader of the FDD, Pierre Nkurunziza, who signed a truce with Buyoya in December last year.

Since then, however, clashes between the army and FDD have led to the indefinite postponement of a fully-fledged ceasefire due to come into effect on December 30.

The meeting with the FDD is expected to look at the political ramifications of the December truce, such as the FDD’s eventual inclusion in government.

Other issues that Kaunda said were expected to be covered at the talks were ”…the return of former fighters and leaders to Burundi, the participation of the former armed movements in the transitional institutions of the state and parliament, and issues relating to the disarmament, demobilisation and the building of a new inclusive security apparatus in the country.”

South Africa, Mozambique and Ethiopia have announced their

commitment to sending peacekeeping troops as part of an African mission to Burundi.

The central African country has for almost 10 years been ravaged by a largely ethnic war, sparked by the assassination in 1993 of the first elected Hutu president.

Burundi is a small former Belgian colony bordering Rwanda in east-central Africa’s Great Lakes region. – Sapa-AFP