Burundi's Multi-Tribal, Broad-Based Transitional Govt. Installed

A transitional government of Burundi was installed here on Thursday, bringing new hope to end the long-term brutal conflicts between the majority ethnic Hutus and minority Tutsis.

The incumbent Tutsi President Pierre Buyoya was sworn in to head the government, with Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu, serving as vice president, in the first 18 months of the three-year transitional period which is split into two phases.

In the second phase, Ndayizeye will take power with a Tutsi vice president who is yet to be known but Buyoya.

A cabinet of 26 ministers from almost all the 19 signatories to the August 2000 Arusha peace agreement were also sworn in, with Tutsis holding 12 portfolios including national defense and foreign affairs and Hutus 14 including interior and national security.

A bicameral legislature, a first in Burundi's history, will be set up a few days later with forty percent of the 190 seats in the national assembly expectedly going to Tutsis and the rest to Hutus. But details of the senate remain sketchy.

The Burundi peace mediator and former South African president Nelson Mandela led a dozen of African leaders to witness the colorful installation in Bujumbura, capital of the tiny central African republic.

Burundi has been wracked by civil war between ethnic majority Hutu rebels and the minority Tutsi-dominated government since 1993 when Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, the first democratically elected president since independence from Belgium in 1962, was assassinated by Tutsi troops.

Some 250,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting and further more have been internally displaced or fled abroad, among whom were many Hutu politicians.

The peace talks were initiated by former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere in June 1998 and have been beefed up by Mandela since he succeeded Nyerere as the facilitator in December 1999 following the latter's death of leukemia.

However, fighting has been intensifying between government forces and the rebels in many parts of the country even after the signing of the peace agreement last August.






People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/