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Monitoring Body Supports Burundi Transitional Govt
The Implementation Monitoring Committee (IMC) of the Burundi peace accord said Saturday in Bujumbura that it will try every means to support the newly established transitional government in its effort for peace and development in Burundi.
Speaking at a one-day IMC meeting , the first since its shifting to Bujumbura from Arusha, northern Tanzania on Friday, IMC Chairman Berhanu Dinka said the IMC will put high on its agenda pushing the direct negotiations between the Burundi government and the two main armed rebels, the CNDD-FDD and the FNL, the official Burundi National Radio said.
The IMC will also monitor the establishment of the transitional national assembly and the senate, the repatriation of Burundian refugees, the peaceful hand-over of power at the end of the transition and the following general elections, Dinka was quoted as saying.
Dinka also urged the donors to respond instantly to flood in the assistance which they promised at a meeting in Paris last December, a total of 440 million U.S. dollars.
The 29-member IMC is composed of representatives of the 19 Burundian signatories to the peace accord signed in Arusha on August 28, 2000, six members of Burundian civil society and one representative each from the United Nations, the Organization of African Union, the Great Lakes region and the donor community.
Dinka, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's representative to the Great Lakes region, was appointed by Annan to lead the IMC late last year.
On Thursday, for the first time since its independence in the early 1960s, Burundi installed a transitional but multi-ethnic and broad-based government, a milestone to bring new hope to end the long-term brutal conflicts between the majority ethnic Hutus and
minority Tutsis.
Incumbent Tutsi President Pierre Buyoya was sworn in at a colorful ceremony in the hall of the National Assembly, which was heavily guarded by fully armed soldiers in camouflage.
Buyoya will head the government in the first 18 months of the three-year transitional period which is split into two equal phases.
Domitien Ndayizeye, a Hutu Secretary-General of the main opposition pro-Hutu party FRODEBU, was sworn in to serve as vice president.
In the second phase, Ndayizeye will take power with a Tutsi vice president who is yet to be known but Buyoya.
In his first speech as the new president, a joyful Buyoya promised that when his 18-month presidency expires, there will be a changeover at the head of state.
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 sudden 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.
The Hutu rebels, mainly the CNDD-FDD and the FNL, have so far refused to participate in the power-sharing peace process and have not laid down their arms until a host of preconditions are met, including the freeing of what they term as political prisoners and
trial of the Tutsi genocide suspects.
In a compromise thrashed out in July this year and backed by regional leaders to save the Arusha accord, the Tutsi-dominated government has to give way to a Tutsi-Hutu power sharing
administration which will shepherd the country towards elections in three years.
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