South African, Ugandan leaders meet on Burundi elections

The chief mediator in the Burundian peace process, South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, arrived in the Uganda capital, Kampala, on Monday for talks with President Yoweri Museveni who chairs a regional peace initiative for Burundi. The talks will be private, Uganda’s ambassador to Rwanda and Burundi, Odonia Ayebale, said in Kampala. He added only that the two leaders would discuss whether it would be possible for Burundi to hold elections within three months as planned. The elections are to be the last phase of a 36-month transitional peace process, following a decade-long civil war that has claimed some 300,000 lives. The war was triggered by the assassination in October 1993 of the country's first elected Hutu president, Melchoir Ndadaye, by a small segment of the Tutsi-dominated army. Ethnic tensions continued until President Pierre Buyoya, who had previously ruled from 1987-93, seized power again in a bloodless coup on 25 July 1996. The government and most rebel groups signed a peace and reconciliation accord in August 2000 in Arusha, Tanzania and established a joint transitional government until elections was held. But the election timetable has been postponed repeatedly. A referendum on Burundi's post-transitional constitution was initially scheduled for 26 October 2004, and then put off to December and again for a third time with no new date being set.