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Buru
ndi'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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