Peace talks aimed at bringing a final end to Burundi’s 13-year civil war hung in limbo on Thursday with the government and rebels still at odds over basic issues, officials said.
The stalled negotiations had been set to resume on Thursday in Tanzania’s commercial capital of Dar es Salaam after a one-week suspension called by South African mediators.
But it was unclear by midday whether they would restart with the chief mediator, South African Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula not expected in Tanzania until at least Friday, according to officials in Pretoria.
Burundi’s Interior Minister Evariste Ndayishimiye told Agence France-Presse he was leaving for Dar es Salaam on Thursday with a technical team charged with dealing with military matters.
Officials with the rebel National Liberation Forces (FNL) could not immediately be reached for comment but their delegation has been in Tanzania for several months.
The talks broke down shortly after the two sides failed to meet a self-imposed July 2 deadline for signing a permanent ceasefire to pave the way for a negotiated peace accord, with each blaming the other for the stalemate.
The FNL has been demanding the dissolution or at least major reform of Burundi’s military while Bujumbura has argued that such issues are premature in truce discussions.
South African and Tanzanian officials have been urging the FNL to drop the demand and Ndayishimiye said the Burundian government hoped the mediators had convinced the rebels to do so.
”We had explained that we did not want to return to Dar es Salaam for nothing,” he said.
The FNL is the only one of Burundi’s seven Hutu rebel groups to have refused to sign onto a 2000 peace process that last year saw the election of a new power-sharing government headed by a former Hutu guerrilla chief.
Burundi’s war has claimed about 300 000 lives since it erupted in 1993 with the assassination of the country’s first democratically elected president, a member of the Hutu majority, by members of the minority Tutsi-dominated army. — Sapa-AFP