Peace talks between the government of Burundi and the country’s last active rebel group resumed in Tanzania on Friday after a four-day interruption, a Tanzanian official said.
Representatives of Bujumbura and the National Liberation Forces (FNL) returned to the table in the Tanzanian commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, in a bid to meet a July 2 deadline to reach a permanent ceasefire deal, the official said.
”The talks have resumed this morning,” the official, a Tanzanian military officer participating in the discussions, told Agence France-Presse. ”It is tough. We hope we will succeed.”
After reaching a tentative, preliminary agreement on June 18 in which the government pledged provisional immunity for FNL fighters and recognition of the group as a political party once a formal pact is signed, the two sides set a two-week deadline to forge a permanent truce.
After a short break, the South African-mediated talks had set to resume on Wednesday but were delayed twice for as-yet unclear reasons amid allegations that the FNL were intentionally stalling.
The parties opened direct talks on May 29 in a new push to reach a lasting peace in Burundi, which is emerging from the devastation of more than a decade of civil war that has claimed about 300 000 lives.
The FNL, which has between 1 500 and 3 000 fighters, is the only one of Burundi’s seven Hutu rebel groups not to have signed on to a 2000 peace deal.
It has also shunned a government elected last year under a new power-sharing Constitution that is headed by a former Hutu rebel leader.
Burundi’s war erupted in 1993 with the assassination of the country’s first democratically elected president, a member of the Hutu majority, by officers in the minority Tutsi-dominated army. — Sapa-AFP