Party leader announces withdrawal from peace process

The secretary-general of Burundi's Parti Liberal (PL), Joseph Ntidendereza, has said his party was withdrawing from the Arusha peace process because he had been intimidated and threatened by the talks' facilitators during the 13-18 September round of negotiations. In a statement received by IRIN on Monday, Ntidendereza said he had been subjected to "multiple harassment" by the team of facilitators from the Nyerere Foundation, who assigned security agents to tail him and refused to have the party's working documents typed up, among other things. The party was withdrawing from "all inter-Burundian talks organised on Tanzanian soil", the statement said. It added that PL leaders wished to see priority accorded to the war effort "until the defeat of armed and other genocidal groups allied to the Interahamwe" in Burundi and the entire sub-region. Nyerere Foundation official Mark Bomani on Monday denied the party had announced its withdrawal from the peace process. Ntidendereza's statement seemed to be from a PL "splinter group", he said. Ntidendereza "was at the last round of talks. He decided to leave after differences with his chairman. We did not tell him to go," Bomani told IRIN.