South African President Thabo Mbeki pressed Burundian political leaders on Monday to agree on elections, seen as crucial for advancing peace in the Central African country, wracked by civil war since 1993.
Talks between Burundi’s President Domitien Ndayizeye and leaders of former rebel groups and political parties opened in acrimony in Pretoria on Saturday after the government in Bujumbura announced plans to delay elections by a year.
The Pretoria talks come ahead of a regional summit on Burundi that is to open in Dar es Salaam on Saturday to take stock of progress since a 2001 accord set up a three-year transitional government paved the way for elections.
”The president and deputy president resumed their consultations today [Monday] and are seeing Pierre Nkurunziza, leader of the Forces for the Defence of Democracy [FDD],” said a spokesperson for Deputy President Jacob Zuma, Lakela Kaunda.
The FDD, the biggest Hutu rebel group in Burundi, last year signed a peace pact with the government in Bujumbura and joined the power-sharing government in place since late 2001.
All sides at the talks in Pretoria were expected to come together for a plenary meeting later in the day, presidential sources said.
Following one-on-one consultations on Saturday, a plenary meeting was scheduled to be held on Sunday but that was later postponed by a day, exasperating the South African hosts who are looking for some progress.
”The president has to go to Johannesburg International airport to meet Jean-Bertrand Aristide. So he would like to get this done with,” said an official, referring to the former Haitian leader who is due to arrive on Monday to take up temporary asylum.
The Burundian government on Friday called for postponing the elections by a year to October 2005 but the former rebel groups rejected the plan.
Nkurunziza said late on Sunday: ”We are ready for elections as scheduled. We do not want any delay.”
South Africa has taken on a mediation role in Burundi where 300 000 people have died in 10-and-a-half years of civil war that has pitted rebels from the Hutu majority against the army and the government, run by Tutsis when the conflict broke out in 1993.
The economy and infrastructure of the tiny country, bordering Rwanda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo, have been devastated.
The interim, power-sharing government was led for 18 months by Tutsi Pierre Buyoya, seconded by Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu, who took over for the second half of the transition period in May last year.
Six of the seven rebel groups have signed on to the peace process and fighting has ceased in 16 of the 17 provinces in the country.
With only five months to go before the October 30 deadline for the transitional process to come to an end, little has been done to lay the groundwork for elections.
There is also no agreement on a new Constitution that is due to come into force on November 1. — Sapa-AFP