A meeting between the Burundian president and the leader of the country’s main rebel group planned for this week has been postponed, rebel sources said on Wednesday.
The meeting between President Domitien Ndayizeye and Pierre Nkurunziza, leader of the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), was due to take place on Wednesday and Thursday in Pretoria.
The talks are aimed at ending the Central African country’s bloody 10-year civil war, in which tens of thousands of civilians have died.
An FDD spokesperson, Major Gelase Daniel Ndabirabe, said Nkurunziza had left Burundi on Monday and was en route to South Africa where he was due by the weekend.
”He is expected to meet President Ndayizeye in Pretoria, but we have not heard of any date yet,” Ndabirabe said.
The talks will focus on what posts the FDD might hold within Burundi’s transition government, notably in security and defence bodies.
A Burundian government source said on Wednesday that Ndayizeye ”stands ready to go to Pretoria at any time, he is only waiting for word from the South African mediator, Deputy President Jacob Zuma. August 19 has been put forward but is not yet certain.”
Regional heads of state are to hold a meeting on Burundi in Dar es Salaam on August 24, ahead of the Southern African Development Community summit on August 25 and 26.
Burundi’s civil war broke out in 1993, pitting rebels from the Hutu majority against their Tutsi rivals, who control the military and held sway over the government until the interim power-sharing regime was installed in November 2001. More than 300 000 people, mostly civilians, have died.
A ceasefire agreed in December last year at Arusha in Tanzania was never implemented with both the government and the FDD accusing the other of violations. — Sapa-AFP