Mandela raps Buyoya over political prisoners

The facilitator of the Arusha peace talks on Burundi, Nelson Mandela, has called on President Pierre Buyoya to admit that Burundi has political prisoners. "I spent 27 years in prison because of my ideas, so I cannot tolerate any regime which imprisons people for ideas," Mandela said, according to a press statement from a meeting of an inter-parliamentary group on the Great Lakes that he addressed in London. "The existence of
prisoners of conscience in Burundi is common knowledge ... Unless
President Buyoya acknowledges that fact, he can have no credibility within the international community," Mandela added.

The former South African president said he was impressed with the
"highly-talented and well educated" delegates at the Arusha talks, and described his task as "tying up loose ends" in order to achieve the breakthrough that was imminent, the statement said. Mandela also called for an international conference on the development of the Burundi economy, which remains more than 90 percent agricultural.