AFRICA/BURUNDI - Agreement over appointment of Internal minister and disarmament of civilians: peace in Burundi makes progress

Tuesday, 10 May 2005

Bujumbura (Fides Service)- “We must be patient, the path is long but there have been positive developments, over the past few days, most promising for the peace process” a local Church source in Burundi told Fides with regard to the agreement reached yesterday in Pretoria South Africa between Domitien Ndayizeye president of Burundi and Pierre Nkurunziza leader of the former Hutu rebel group Forces for the Defence of Democracy FDD. The agreement settled the appointment of a new internal minister over which the two men had fought.
“The national unity government has a precise procedure for the replacement of a minister” the sources told Fides. “He must be chosen from a list of three presented by all the political groups in the government. The FDD now part of the interim government presented a candidate without respecting the procedure and this led to a crisis and the FDD ministers walked out”.
“The intervention of the African Union mediator South Africa’s vice president Jacob Zuma was decisive to end the crisis” the sources told Fides.
With regard to peace in Burundi, a programme to disarm civilians started yesterday 9 May (see Fides 6 May 2005), with a ceremony in Gitega, 145 km from the capital Bujumbura. “The ceremony took place in front of representatives of the institutions and members of the diplomatic corps. President Ndayizeye returned from South Africa to take part” the sources told Fides. “The choice of Gitega is significant. It was here in the centre of the country that civil war started in 1993, and Gitega was the scene of some of the most terrible massacres. Starting the disarmament process here shows the importance of Gitega for national reconciliation”.
Burundians are called to vote on 19 August, a date set after the decision to extend the mandate of the interim government until 26 August when the newly elected executive will take over. President Ndayizeye and FDD leader Nkurunziza signed a peace agreement in November 2003 in Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania, which ended 12 years of bloody civil war in which 300,000 were killed. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 10/5/2005 righe 34 parole 445)


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