Key political players in the Burundi peace process, including President Domitien Ndayizeye, entered a fourth day of talks in Pretoria on Tuesday to try to agree on an election timetable.
South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, who is the chief mediator in the negotiations, continued consultations that started on Saturday after the Burundi government announced that it had plans to delay elections by a year.
Pierre Nkurunziza, leader of one of the main former rebel groups, the Forces for Defence of Democracy, is refusing to abide by the delay which would push back elections to October 2005.
Zuma is also insistent that to maintain credibility, the transitional government has to meet targets set out in the 2001 peace accord, which set up an interim government that shares power between Hutus and Tutsis, the two main groups of protagonists in Burundi’s ten-and-a-half-year civil war.
Leaders in Dar es Salaam are to take stock of progress since the 2001 accord set up a three-year transitional government and paved the way for elections in Burundi, where about 300 000 people have died since 1993.
Under the 2001 accord, the interim power-sharing government was led for 18 months by Tutsi Pierre Buyoya, seconded by 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 onto the peace process and fighting has ceased in 16 of the 17 provinces in the country. – Sapa-AFP