EU policy chief Javier Solana yesterday said the EU was ready to help pay for an eventual African Union peacekeeping force in Burundi, where the capital, Bujumbura, has suffered the fiercest assault in ten years of civil war.

"We think that the situation in Burundi is bad and intolerable.

We will be in position to help financially if the African Union deployed a peace keeping force," Solana told reporters after a meeting with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

Well over 200 people have been killed in Bujumbura since the rebel National Liberation Forces (FNL) launched an attack on the city on July 7.

Earlier yesterday, Museveni, who chairs a regional peace initiative devoted to the Burundi crisis, said heads of state engaged in the initiative - the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa - would meet in Dar es Salaam this weekend to consider beefing up the African military presence there.

The African Union, which groups all states on the continent, already has South African and Mozambican troops in Burundi, but their mandate is limited to facilitating the demobilisation of fighters from rebel groups which, unlike the FNL, have reached ceasefire deals with the government.

Solana was speaking after a hectic day that saw him hosted by DRC President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa and Rwandan President Paul Kagame in Kigali.

Earier in the day, Solana told reporters he had urged Kagame and Museveni - who both support, or have supported, DRC rebels groups fighting the Kinshasa government and who both until recently had thousands of troops in DRC - to work with a transitional government taking shape in Kinshasa.

"Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi must play the game, just like the DRC," Solana said in Kinshasa.

"It is absolutely necessary that these relations be positive and constructive," he said.

Today, Solana was due to visit the northeastern DRC town of Bunia, where the EU has deployed about 1 000, mostly French troops to protect civilians in the wake of interethnic clashes that killed hundreds of people in May.

"I hope that the new (DRC) government will tackle the problems in Ituri (the province where Bunia is the main town) as it takes over office," he said in Kampala. - Sapa-AFP.