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Burundi’s last active rebel group shrugs off African peace summit

8th June 2004

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Burundi's last active rebel group yesterday told AFP that a weekend summit attended by African leaders aiming to bring peace to the country would not yield any results.

Ibrahim Natikirutimana from the National Liberation Forces (FNL) dismissed the summit in Tanzania, which turned down a government proposal to postpone elections scheduled in October by a year and slapped a travel ban on the rebel group.

"If the decisions taken could have brought peace to Burundi we would have been very happy. But we do not believe those decisions will bring that peace," he said.

The summit, attended by presidents Benjamin Mpaka of Tanzania, Domitien Ndayizeye of Burundi, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Rwanda's Paul Kagame and Levi Mwanawasa, turned down the government plan to defer elections.

The October 2004 date was set in accords which Burundian political leaders signed in Tanzania in 2000.

The decision about the timetable for the elections, which end a transitional period of power-sharing between the tiny central African country's Hutu majority and Tutsi minority, was handed over to regional heads of state after the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD), a Hutu former rebel group now in government, rejected Ndayizeye's call for a delay.

More than 300 000 people have been killed in Burundi since Hutu groups took up arms against the then Tutsi-led government and army, but all but one of these groups has recently made peace and joined the interim administration.

The summit also decided to take action against the NFL, the only Hutu rebel group still active in Burundi, imposing immediate travel restrictions on FNL members.

Natikirutimana, an aide of FNL leader Agathon Rwasa, said, "Peace will not come to Burundi until the truth is told.

"We have to stop denying that there are ethnic groups in Burundi and we have to accept that the minority continues to oppress the majority," he said in an apparent reference to Tutsis.

He, however, said the group's talks before the summit with South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma had gone off very well.

"We gave our point of view which was well received. Deputy President Zuma said he appreciated our point of view," he said.

"He promised that his door would remain open to us but we did not discuss at what level the next meeting would be or exactly when." - Sapa-AFP
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