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African Leaders to Meet in Tanzania on Burundian Peace
Over a dozen African leaders are expected next Monday to attend a one-day summit on Burundi in Tanzania' s northern town of Arusha, which could be a landmark meeting before the installation of a transitional government in Bujumbura, Burundi, on November 1, Tanzania's official Daily News newspaper reported on Saturday.
The summit has been called by President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, the chairman of the regional initiative on war-torn Burundi.
Tanzanian Mark Bomani, an aide to former South African president Nelson Mandela, who is the chief mediator of the Burundi peace process, was quoted as saying that the summit would assess progress made regarding the implementation of the Arusha Peace Accord, signed on August 28 last year by 19 Burundian signatories.
Monday's summit will also review efforts to convince Burundi's two major armed Hutu rebel groups, CNDD-FDD and FNL, who did not participate in the Arusha agreement, to accept a ceasefire.
President Omar Bongo of Gabon and South African Vice President Jacob Zuma are separately negotiating with the rebel groups to persuade them to stop fighting the government forces in Burundi.
Mandela will present to the summit a report on progress made so far on the talks with the rebels, Bomani said.
The summit will be attended by leaders from Zambia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) , Malawi, Uganda, Gabon, Senegal, South Africa, Nigeria and Tanzania.
According to Bomani, the summit would probably be the last before Burundi's current president Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi, is installed as president to lead the country for the first 18 months of the agreed three-year transitional government.
Under an arrangement proposed by Mandela, Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu, will serve as vice-president during the first phase.
Ndayizeye is the Secretary General of the largest Hutu party in Burundi, the Front for Democracy (FRODEBU).
A Hutu president and a Tutsi vice-president will lead the second 18-month phase. The leaders for the second phase have not been decided.
The Buyoya-Ndayizeye choice was endorsed at a summit of regional heads of state last July in Arusha. During the summit, Buyoya and Ndayizeye also signed an agreement to work together.
Bomani says Monday's summit will also review efforts made in the deployment of peacekeeping troops before the scheduled installation of the transitional government. Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria and South Africa have agreed to provide peacekeepers.
More than 250,000 people in Burundi have been killed in ethnic fighting between ethnic majority Hutu rebels and the minority Tutsi-dominated government and army since 1993.
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