Burundi’s main Tutsi party said on Thursday it had rejected a proposed deal to share power with Hutus, despite claims by South African mediators that they had achieved a general agreement in Burundi’s peace talks.
Uprona, Burundi’s main party representing minority Tutsis, called this week’s talks ”a big setback” and said it did not sign the draft proposed by South African mediators.
South Africa issued a statement Thursday saying Uprona had registered some objections, but that all parties had agreed to a system for sharing power in Parliament, the Cabinet, the appointment of vice presidents and the election of the president.
There was no immediate explanation for the difference in announcements, and Zanele Mngadi, a spokesperson for South Africa’s Deputy President Jacob Zuma, said mediators would not comment beyond their statement.
The chairperson of the main Hutu party, Frodebu, meanwhile called the talks a success.
”We have finally reached agreement on the sharing of power between ethnic groups,” Jean Minani told the independent Bonesha radio in Burundi. He is also interim speaker in Burundi’s national assembly.
Negotiators had stalled for days over the issue of quotas to guarantee minority representation in government. Tutsi parties fear that, without a quota system, the Hutu parties will dominate.
South Africa’s former President Nelson Mandela, who helped broker the initial peace deals in 2000, was summoned to Pretoria on Wednesday to help break the deadlock.
Uprona spokesperson Gerard Nduwayo said his party rejected the draft because it never clarified quotas, and only took Hutu parties’ suggestions into account, according to the radio.
South African mediators claimed those quotas were agreed, with Tutsis and Hutus sharing power equally in the Senate, and Hutus holding 60% of the lower house seats and Tutsis 40%.
Civil war broke out in Burundi in October 1993 after Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country’s first democratically elected leader, a Hutu. Previously, Tutsis had dominated government since Burundi’s 1962 independence from Belgium.
More than 260 000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict between the Tutsi-dominated army and Hutu rebel factions in the country of about 2,6-million people.
South African mediators said that, under the agreement, the first president would be elected by both houses of Parliament, and subsequent presidents would be elected directly by the public.
The agreement also said the president would appoint two vice-presidents, one from each ethnic groups, who must then be approved by Parliament. The Cabinet would be 60% Hutu and 40% Tutsi.
Negotiators in South Africa included Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye, who heads a transitional government; officials from the main Hutu rebel group, Forces for the Defence of Democracy; and leaders of Uprona and Frodebu.
Ndayizeye said earlier this year his administration had approved a 12-month delay of elections, saying that with the ongoing fighting it was ”difficult — even impossible” to finish the electoral process by November 1.
Burundians were supposed to elect legislators in September, two months after they would have voted for local government officials.
The new legislators were then to elect a president on October 25. – Sapa-AP