BURUNDI-POLITICS: European Union Keeps Up the Pressure

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Feb 13 1996 (IPS) - The European Union (EU) will continue to put pressure on Burundi’s feuding politicians to prevent the strife-torn country from slipping further into chaos, EU officials said here Tuesday.

“We are keeping up the pressure,” said Marcello Ricoveri, head of the European Union Troika to Burundi. “If we release the pressure, the politicians in Burundi will relax and forget about the process of democratisation.”

Ricoveri, Italy’s ambassador to Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, headed an EU delegation which travelled to Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, on Monday.

“During our 12-hour stay in Bujumbura we had extensive dialogue with government and political leaders there,” he told journalists in the Kenyan capital.

The Italian diplomat, whose country currently holds the presidency of the European Union, was accompanied to the Central African nation by officials from Ireland, Spain and the European Union.

The Troika has been mandated by the European Union to help the government in Burundi to speed up the process of democratisation and restore law and order in the country. “But if the state of lawlessness continues,” Ricoveri warned, “we shall be forced to take appropriate measures”. He did not elaborate.

Burundi’s ethnic turmoil began with the assassination of the country’s elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, by renegade soldiers in 1993.

Ndadaye, from the majority Hutu ethnic group, was perceived by Tutsi elements within the army as threatening their traditional grip on power. His death after only three months into office triggered mass killings across the country in which more than 80,000 people died within a few weeks.

International non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have repeatedly warned that Burundi faces a disaster similar to that which occurred in neighbouring Rwanda in 1994, when up to a million people died in three months of mass killings.

Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) noted in a recent report that, since 1993, “it has become impossible for many Tutsi peasants to live in the countryside”.

“They have been displaced by violence, forced to move toward communal centres, and have been living for the last two years like refugees in their own country,” the report said, adding: “Since March 1995, life has become similarly impossible for members of the Hutu community in and around Bujumbura.

“Political violence has resulted in a geographical reorganisation of Burundi, creating islands of homogenous groups vulnerable to political and military manipulation,” MSF noted.

Despite a power-sharing agreement between them, relations between the mainly Hutu Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU) and predominantly Tutsi opposition parties have been wracked by conflict in recent months.

However, said Ricoveri “we can say that the situation in Burundi is better than it was a month ago. There are signs that political dialogue has started both in the government and outside of it”.

According to Irish government official Tim O’Connor, former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, one of the few African leaders to relinquish power voluntarily (he did so in 1985), is also trying to mediate in the conflict.

O’Connor, who in charge of African affairs in the ministry of foreign affairs in Dublin, told journalists that the people of Burundi preferred an African solution to their problem.

There are 60 observers from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on the ground in Burundi and, said O’Connor, “we hope that their efforts will reduce the tension” there.

But, for its presence to be felt, the EU is considering sending former UN Special Envoy to Mozambique Aldo Ayello as its representative to Burundi to broker peace.

“The EU council of ministers will take the decision to send Ayelo to Burundi on February 28,” said Giovanni Livi, the EU’s director for eastern and southern Africa. He also disclosed that the European Union would soon switch its support from humanitarian to development aid in both Rwanda and Burundi.

Since 1993, the EU has spent 355.43 million Ecu on humanitarian aid to Rwanda, Burundi and refugees from the two countries in Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire.