Burundi: Talks with rebel group postponed

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21 April 2006

BUJUMBURA (IRIN) - Talks between the Burundian government and the country's only active rebel movement that had been scheduled to take place in Tanzania on Monday have been called off, the head of the government's negotiating team said on Wednesday.

'The members of the team are on standby and could leave at any time for Dar es Salaam,' Salvator Ntacobamaze, a former Burundi interior minister who is head of the government negotiating team, said in the capital, Bujumbura.

He said his team was on the way to Bujumbura airport on Monday to board a plane to the venue of the talks, Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam, when he received a call from an official in the Tanzania government asking him to cancel the trip.

He denied reports that the Burundi government was boycotting the talks. He added that Tanzania's ambassador to Burundi had informed him that arrangements for the talks would be finalised in the coming days and could take place by the end of this week.

An official IRIN contacted on Wednesday at Tanzania's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined a request to comment.

A delegation representing the rebel Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) has been in Dar es Salaam since mid-March waiting for the talks to begin. It is headed by FNL leader Agathon Rwasa who recently agreed to the talks although he insists on face-to-face negotiations with Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza.

Ntacobamaze said that if Rwasa refuses to negotiate with the government team, 'we will listen to his views and report them to the head of state'.

The FNL is spilt into two factions, one led by Rwasa and other by Jean Bosco Sindayigaya. A member of the government delegation, Brig-Gen Silas Ntigurirwa said on Monday that the government delegation would be willing to listen to both factions.

The FNL's stronghold is in Bujumbura Rural and Bubanza provinces near the porous border with the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

On Monday, the Congolese army handed FNL combatants based in eastern Congo over to the Burundian army. Burundi has previously accused the DRC of harbouring FNL fighters and welcomed the Congolese action. 'This is a good sign that Congo authorities want to collaborate with Burundi,' said army spokesman Maj Adolphe Manirakiza during the handover.

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