FIGHTING BREAKS OUT NEAR BURUNDI’S CAPITAL, SEVERAL KILLED
Fighting has broken out near Burundi’s capital, where several soldiers were killed by rebels, local officials and rebel sources said on Saturday as the president flew out for a peace parley.
Rebels of the National Liberation Forces attacked a military post at Gisovu, five kilometres southeast of Bujumbura, which was ”wiped out and occupied by us,” FNL representative Pasteur Hibimana said.
”Fighting began at around 5:00 am (0300 GMT) on Saturday and all the people in the region, about 5 000 people, fled,” said a local official in the capital of the central African country, asking not to be named.
”Several soldiers were killed, but I don’t know exactly how many,” the official added. From the city centre, gunfire and shell bursts could be heard in mid-afternoon. The clashes came as President Pierre Buyoya left Bujumbura for peace talks in neighbouring Tanzania with the main rebel movement, saying he hoped it would be the last ceasefire parley.
Buyoya was set to meet members of the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), which has signed a ceasefire with the government, unlike the FNL that has refused to join the peace process. ”The aim of this meeting is to discuss questions which went unanswered during the last one in Pretoria (South Africa),” Buyoya
said before leaving Bujumbura. ”We hope it will be the last on ceasefire issues.”
Agathon Rwasa’s FNL meanwhile has been fighting the government army, dominated by the country’s minority Tutsis, in the Rukoko marshes north of Bujumbura since Thursday.
Local officials confirmed that the rebels fought off a government attempt to drive them out of the marshes. ”One of our number was killed and five were injured,” Habimana said. ”The army lost several dozen soldiers.”
After mutual accusations of ceasefire violations between the main rebel FDD and the army, FDD leader Pierre Nkurunziza will not attend the talks in person, the FDD secretary general Hussein Radjabu said. Radjabu added, however, that he would himself be leading an FDD delegation to the Tanzanian coast city. ”We shall be there to listen,” he said in Dar es Salaam by telephone.
The FDD on January 27 signed a protocol of understanding with the Burundi government in Pretoria on implementing and monitoring a ceasefire pact reached in September, but the rebels last week suspended the talks. The FDD says the army has deliberately cut their food supplies. They also object to an African Mission of peacekeeping troops from other countries, saying they were not consulted about these soldiers or their origin.
A small, Tunisian-led advance contingent has already arrived to monitor ceasefires reached between the government and three of four rebel movements in a war which has claimed more than 200 000 lives since October 1993.
South African soldiers are also deployed to protect politicians of the Hutu majority who have returned from exile to join a transition government set up in November 2001 under a three-year power-sharing arrangement. These troops are to be joined by Mozambicans and Ethiopians who will make up the bulk of the African Mission force.
Buyoya left for Dar es Salaam at the invitation of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, chairman of a regional initiative on Burundi. The talks will allso be attended by South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, the main mediator in the peace process. For the FDD, Radjabu said that ”in any event, Nkurunziza will not meet Buyoya as long he fails to implement what was agreed in
Pretoria on January 27.” – Sapa-AFP