POLITICS-EAST AFRICA: Burundi Rejects Cease-fire Accord

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Paul Chintowa and Moyiga Nduru

DAR ES SALAAM/NAIROBI, Jun 23 1998 (IPS) - Strife-torn Burundi looked set for a new beginning until the government of Major Pierre Buyoya ripped apart a cease-fire agreement signed last week in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.

A government minister in charge of peace, Ambroise Niyonsaba, said the government was not “involved” in the agreement signed on Jun. 21 by 17 factions to end the five-year civil war in that country.

Burundi’s government says it also has objected to the cease- fire for fear that the agreement may undermine its ability to keep peace and order in the country.

“The government must continue to carry out police actions and defend people,” Niyonsaba was quoted by Burundi’s pro-government Hirondelle News Agency (HNA) as saying on Monday. He said the army would continue its patrols and operations to hunt for rebels.

Niyonsaba dropped the bombshell at a time when the 17 factions were preparing for the next round of peace talks due to start in Arusha on Jul. 20 under the chairmanship of former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere.

Nyerere is the internationally-recognised mediator in the conflict between Burundi’s government and rebels from the country’s Hutu majority.

Even before the Jun. 15-21 parley, chaired by Nyerere, Burundi’s peace process has been a bumpy one. For example, talks collapsed in August 1997 after President Buyoya, a minority Tutsi, accused Nyerere of supporting the rebels’ views, something which he said should have automatically disqualified the ex-president as a mediator.

Buyoya, who seized power in a military coup in July 1996, preferred the venue of the talks to be changed to either Ethiopia, South Africa, Zimbabwe or Zambia.

It took a bit of arm twisting by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the international community for Bujumbura to attend the just-concluded peace talks in Arusha.

Burundi began slipping into chaos in October 1993, when renegade soldiers killed Melchior Ndadaye, the country’s first Hutu president, in an aborted coup three months after he was elected. Ndadaye had been perceived by Tutsi hardliners in the army as threatening their traditional grip on power. His death triggered mass killings and fighting between Hutus and the minority Tutsis.

Since then, more than 200,000 people have been killed in Burundi, with a population of an estimated seven million people, according to aid agencies operating in the Central African country.

The killings have been blamed on the Tutsi-led army as well as armed Hutu groups infiltrating from refugee camps in Tanzania and from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly Zaire.

To reduce the tension, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Sadako Ogata said in February that the “small” number of Tanzanian police in refugee camps in the west of the country, which host mainly Burundians, would be beefed up so as to maintain the “civilian character” of those camps.

She told a press conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, that some 500 police officers would be drafted to maintain order in the camps, which host 260,000 refugees. “We shall train, provide logistics and stipends to the police,” she said.

Late last year, the Burundi and Tanzanian armies exchanged fire across their common borders, resulting in the death of a number of people, mostly civilians. Buyoya charged that Tanzania was training and arming Hutu elements among the refugees to invade Burundi, but Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa denied the allegations.

Burundi is also unhappy with Tanzania for getting its neighbours to impose economic sanctions against it in July 1996. Instead of lifting the embargo, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, DRC, Zambia, Ethiopia and Eritrea decided on Feb. 21 at a heads of state meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to maintain the embargo until Buyoya restores civilian rule in Burundi.

“If Buyoya is not going to stand down and form a transitional government, we shall go back to the bush,” said Leonard Nyangoma, leader of the National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD), the main Hutu rebel group fighting the Tutsi-dominated regime in the capital Bujumbura.

Nyangoma, a former interior minister, told journalists in Arusha on Sunday that there would be no meaningful solution to the Burundi crisis if the government itself is not serious about talks.

Nyangoma accused Buyoya’s administration of putting a spanner in the work of peacemakers in Burundi.

Nyerere too, appears uncertain about the on-going peace process. “We don’t know when the warring factions will come to an agreement,” he said in Arusha.

But the European Union (EU) envoy to Burundi Aldo Ajelo told the Nairobi-based Intergrated Regional Information Network (IRIN), a UN humanitarian information unit, on Tuesday that the issue of the description of the “armed parties” during the talks was “semantic” and that a suspension of hostilities, including the army, was formally agreed.

According to Ajelo’s information, even the breakaway CNDD-FDD faction would not obstruct the agreement, he said, although they were not represented in Arusha. The Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) split from the main CNDD in February.

Ajelo, who attended the Arusha parley, said the tone of the talks in general was “amazing”, given the previous lack of communication between the parties, and that the progress made was “more than everyone expected”.