By Moyiga Nduru
NAIROBI, Feb 21 1996 (IPS)

The United Nations wants to send a rapid intervention force to Burundi to prevent generalised mayhem in the Central African nation, but analysts and politicians here advance a variety of other recipes for peace there.

Some propose a peace-building force. Others say a council of elders, women and religious leaders. Then there are those who feel the blood-soaked nation should be ruled for a fixed period by an international administration and, if that fails, annexed to Tanzania.

“It will be a good idea to deploy a peace-building force to encourage Burundi’s ethnically-divided people to start talking and knowing each other,” says Burundi-watcher Maina Kiai, a Nairobi- based human rights activist.

Kiai, who heads the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), argues that such a force could be made up of police officials, lawyers, clergymen and soldiers and should be assembled by the Organisation of Africa Unity (OAU), which has a contingent of 60 observers in Burundi.

Since the assassination in October 1993 of Burundi’s first Hutu president, an estimated 100,000 people have died in ethnic killings and clashes between its Tutsi-dominated army and Hutu rebels.

A power-sharing arrangement between its ethnic-based parties has failed to bring peace to the country, partly as a result of disagreement between the parties and partly because the coalition has been unable to control the army or persuade the rebels to lay down their arms.

Last week U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali called on U.N. member states to contribute up to 25,000 soldiers to a standby force, which could be deployed in a neighbouring country and be airlifted to Burundi if the situation there deteriorates.

He proposed that the Council send the troops under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which authorises the use of force to deal with threats to international peace. The Security Council was due to debate the proposal shortly.

Burundi’s political parties are divided on the idea.

The Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU), which draws its support from Hutus (85 percent of the six million Burundians) welcomed Boutros-Ghali’s proposal as a means of preventing the type of situation that obtained in Rwanda in 1994, when an estimated 500,000 people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were massacred by Hutu extremists.

However, FRODEBU President Jean Minani said Monday that he preferred the force to be deployed in Burundi rather than in a neighbouring country to enable it to react much faster.

On the other hand, Burundi’s Prime Minister Antoine Nduwayo, whose Union for National Progress (UPRONA) is supported mainly by Tutsis (14 percent of the population), has rejected the U.N. plan.

Nduwayo, who was on a tour of Scandinavian countries this week to raise political, financial and humanitarian support for Burundi’s government, Monday told a Finnish newspaper that “the consequences of the peacekeeping operations of the U.N. have been bad, especially if the troops have been sent to the country against the will of the locals”.

That happened in Somalia where, in 1994, the United Nations was forced to withdraw the peacekeepers it had deployed there two years before.

Kiai says the problem in Burundi is one of fear. “The Tutsi fear that if the Hutus come to power they will oppress them. I think what they need is a statesman of (South African President) Nelson Mandela’s stature to reconcile them,” he says.

For Desire Joe Bizimana, a Nairobi-based analyst on Rwanda and Burundi, there is still room for reconciliation. “The people of Burundi have seen what happened in Rwanda and I don’t think they will allow their country to dissolve into genocide,” he says.

Bizimana, a Tutsi from Burundi, feels that a ‘Council of Elders’ — a body which operated in the former Belgian colony until independence in 1962 — should be revived to resolve Burundi’s conflict.

“Our elders understand Burundi’s problems better than the young people now destroying it,” he says. “However, I think the Council should be expanded to include women and religious leaders of integrity, with absolute power to talk face-to-face with Hutu and Tutsi leaders.”

Once revived, he says, the Council should work closely with an independent international group on Burundi that includes Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and former U.S. and Tanzanian presidents Jimmy Carter and Julius Nyerere.

Hutu leaders like Methodist Bishop J. Alfred Ndoricimpa, who heads the Nairobi-based ‘Burundi International Peace Committee’, want a “third party” to run Burundi and steer it back on the road to peace.

“We must find a mode of governance which may allow international figures to adminster the country for a period of four to five years,” Ndoricimpa said. “The mission of such a government would be to reorganise the army, the police, the judiciary, the provincial administration etc.

“It would facilitate the return and the resettlement of refugees in their properties. One year before the end of the mission, that government would hold general elections. During the last year, members of the international government would serve as an advisory body,” he added.

Should that reconciliation bid fail, Ndoricimpa says, his committee would prefer Burundi to be annexed to Tanzania. “Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda were once part of Deutsche Ostaafrika (German East Africa),” he recalls. “Culturally, Burundians are more linked to the peoples of Tanzania.”

For Bizimana, however, the annexation idea is a non-starter. “It can’t happen in the 21st century, at a time when Burundi is a sovereign state and has a standing army,” he argues.

Kiai, who participated in a conference on Burundi in the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha last year, says it will require extraordinary skill to resolve the conflict in Burundi.

“When we were in Arusha, Tutsi intellectuals made it clear that they were completely opposed to the idea of a one-man-one- vote,” he recalls. “They said there would be chaos in Burundi if that happens.

“To me that kind of fear can only be dispelled by creating an atmosphere where the two ethnic groups can exchange views freely. They can only do that through the peace-building force rather than the peace-keeping force.”

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