Peace minister outlines progress

Burundi Minister for the Peace Process Ambroise Niyonsaba said on Sunday that the Implementation Monitoring Committee (IMC) of the Arusha accord had “managed to do good work” during its working session last week. The membership of the executive council had been finalised, and the IMC had agreed to establish a working group on the repeal of laws which limited political freedom, Radio Burundi quoted him as saying. That group is due to report back to the IMC with proposals two weeks before the next IMC meeting in two months’ time. It was agreed to ask the peace process facilitator, Nelson Mandela, to launch a campaign to sensitise the Burundi public on the content of the Arusha accord, Niyonsaba said. It was also recommended that the IMC chairman, UN Ambassador Berhanu Dinka, give a press conference in Burundi, together with Burundi-based members of the Commission, to show that its members were “genuinely concerned about the implementation of the accord,” the minister added.

The IMC recommended that the government sets up an independent commission on the issue of political prisoners as soon as possible, and that the government and National Assembly undertake preparatory work on the issue of temporary immunity (for politicians in exile) and report back before the next meeting, Niyonsaba said on Radio Burundi. The minister did not mention it, but sources close to the Arusha talks told IRIN that the IMC had also called upon the government to establish a commission for the rehabilitation and resettlement of refugees and displaced people, as required under the Arusha accord. The chairman of the Burundi human rights group Ligue Iteka, Pie Ntakarutimana, on Saturday expressed disappointment with the talks, Azania news agency reported. He said that if the same energy that had been devoted to having parties sign the peace agreement or the search for a transitional president had instead been devoted towards seeking a ceasefire, then peace would have been achieved. Ntakarutimana warned that the possibility of an alliance between the Hutu rebel FNL and FDD, and a political crisis which gave room for bickering about transitional leadership, were further “warning signs” that the situation could worsen in Burundi.