BURUNDI-POLITICS: New Mediator in the Offing?

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Sep 2 1997 (IPS) - A regional summit to be held this week in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, is likely to be dominated by discussions over whether former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere should stay on as mediator in the Burundi conflict.

Media reports here speculate that the 75-year-old former president will offer to step down as peace broker when heads of state of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo meet in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday to discuss stalled peace negotiations.

The heads of state were summoned by Tanzania after the latest round of talks between Burundi’s belligerents failed to take off in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha on Aug. 25, since it was boycotted by Burundi’s strongman, Major Pierre Buyoya.

Backed by the sub-regional leaders and the 54-nation Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Nyerere has had a tough time mediating between Burundi’s belligerents, a job he began two years ago. Even before the failed Aug. 25 talks, he was already being perceived by Burundi’s ruling Tutsi elite as being partial to the country’s Hutu majority.

Unable to make a headway in the face of the growing hostility of the elite in Bujumbura, Nyerere is now reported to be willing to remove the perceived obstacles to negotiations by proposing that he step aside and that another country host the talks.

“He is prepared to remove Tanzania as a host country and withdraw himself,” Kenya’s leading independent newspaper, the Daily Nation, quoted Charles Sanga, an aide to the former Tanzanian leader, as saying on Tuesday.

Bernard Barandereka, a top Burundi official, told journalists here on Monday that “Tanzania has no solution to offer the people of Burundi because it is pursuing the same policy which is at the root of the continuing instability in Burundi.”

He called upon Dar es Salaam to disarm Hutu rebels hiding among the more than 230,000 Burundi refugees in Tanzania.

“The refugee camps are within a one-night walk into Burundi. And, Tanzania has intentionally excluded international observers from the camps so as to hide their real intention of training terrorists to attack Burundi,” said Barandereka.

He said the Hutu rebels hiding in Tanzania were allied with the former Rwandese Armed Forces, the dreaded Interahamwe militia who did much of the killing during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the former Zairean armed forces and Ugandan dissidents. “These groups constitute a real danger to the peace in the Great Lakes Region,” said Barandereka.

The Great Lakes Region comprises Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But, in a move widely seen here as aimed at cooling tempers between Dar es Salaam and Bujumbura, Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa last week ordered a roundup of Burundian and Congolese (ex- Zairean) refugees living outside designated camps.

State-owned Radio Tanzania, monitored here on Sunday, quoted Mkapa as accusing an undisclosed number of unencamped refugees of increasing banditry in western Tanzania, on the border with Burundi. The Tanzanian president said the people rounded up would be sent back to their motherland.

Some 400,000 refugees — including 74,000 from the Democratic Republic of Congo — live in camps in western Tanzania.

The crisis in Burundi was triggered by the assassination of the country’s first Hutu President Melchior Ndadaye in a failed coup by Tutsi soldiers against his Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU) government in 1993. About 150,000 people have reportedly died since then in the Central African nation.

Experts on the region say the conflict in Burundi is rooted in the fear of both Hutus and Tutsis for their existence. Hutus account for an estimated 85 percent of Burundi’s 5.6 million people and Tutsis about 14 percent.

Relations between Burundi and its larger neighbour, Tanzania, nosedived early last month following an allegation by a group of Tanzanian legislators that four Tanzanians had been killed by the Burundi army in a raid inside Tanzania.

The claim was denied by Burundi, which, in return, accused Tanzania of supporting armed rebels involved in Burundi’s civil war, which pits Hutu insurgents against an army dominated by minority Tutsis. Tanzania has repeatedly denied such charges.

The tension almost resulted in a military showdown following allegations by Tanzania last month that Bujumbura was amassing troops along its border to attack refugees in Tanzania. Tanzanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jakaya Kikwete warned that Tanzania’s army would retaliate should Burundi attack the camps.

It is not clear why Nyerere has decided to change his mind on his role. Following the collapse of the Aug. 25 talks, he had said he would not resign as mediator since he saw no other alternative to end the conflict except talks.

“I will not pack my bag. I will continue to mediate … because that is what I believe is the solution to Burundi’s problem. Not war. I made this clear to the United Nations and to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) before I took up the challenge to mediate in that conflict two years ago,” he told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Africa Service last week.

“Buyoya and his friends think that Tanzania and Nyerere are the problem,” he had added. “I say if we are the problem, come and let us discuss it.”

Barandereka said it was Buyoya who initiated the last round of peace talks with an armed opposition group in Rome and that “things were going well until Tanzania declared its intention to teach us a lesson.”

In March, Buyoya’s government and the Hutu-dominated National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD) held talks in Rome, Italy, brokered by Sant Egidio, a Catholic community that has mediated in other conflicts including the 1975-1991 civil war in Mozambique.

During Monday’s press conference, Barandereka urged the regional heads of state to ignore renewed calls by Dar es Salaam to tighten sanctions they imposed on Burundi on July 31, 1996, after Buyoya deposed civilian president Sylvestre Ntibantunganya.

“If that is Tanzania’s idea of negotiations, the sooner they withdraw and leave us in peace the better,” he said.