Buyoya envisages camp closures within two months

President Pierre Buyoya said on Monday the dismantling of much-criticised civilian regroupment camps could be over within two months, but that the handling of the issue was difficult. He told a news conference broadcast by Radio Burundi that while the camps were a focus of international pressure, managing Burundi's security crisis had meant "making a difficult choice between two evils." When the camps were established in the second
half of last year, "violence was threatening Bujumbura, residents of Bujumbura-rural were seriously threatened by the rebellion, the capital was threatened by large-scale massacres, so we had to take the bull by the horns and take appropriate measures to stabilise the situation," Buyoya said. "That was a precondition to making progress on the peace process
front, everything would have come to a standstill." The lesson of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 was that governments in the region could "count on nobody" in the international community, Buyoya said. "If you do not manage the security situation, chaos will come and you will disappear as the international community sits back and watches. The same international community will later come and blame us for the massive killings and
genocide, so we had to take up our responsibilities," he added.