Main rebel group fails to show for ceasefire talks

A new round of ceasefire talks to end Burundi’s nine-year old civil war failed to get underway on Tuesday, as rebels of the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces pour la defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD) said they did not get the invitation to attend. "We have not received the invitation. And even if we would receive it today, it would take days for us to report to Dar es Salaam," Gelase Ndabirabe, spokesman of the CNDD-FDD, told IRIN. He said the CNDD-FDD had asked the South Africans facilitating the talks to send the invitation "at least two weeks before" the start of the meeting. "The invitation must also clearly state whether we are going to discuss or to negotiate because if it was to discuss we would not go," Gelase said. However, the Burundi government’s chief negotiator at the talks, Ambroise Niyonsaba, told IRIN that a member of the South African facilitation present in Dar es Salaam - the Tanzanian venue of the talks - told him that they had sent the invitation to the CNDD-FDD. "We are waiting for clarification, and if there is no chance to meet the other side, we will return to Bujumbura," Niyonsaba added. Before leaving for Dar es Salaam on Sunday, he had told IRIN that his team hoped that a ceasefire agreement would be reached before 25 November, when regional heads of state are due to meet again on the Burundi situation. On 12 November, the chairman of the regional initiative for peace in Burundi, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, gave the warring sides in Burundi another two weeks to reach a ceasefire agreement with the transitional government in Bujumbura. A previous deadline of 30 days expired on 7 November.