Buyoya cancels Gabon trip in rebels’ absence

President Pierre Buyoya announced on Wednesday that he was cancelling a planned trip to the Gabonese capital, Libreville, for ceasefire talks, because the rebel Forces pour la defense de la democratie (FDD) leader, Jean-Bosco Ndayikengurukiye, did not plan to attend. Buyoya said he had just been informed that “the FDD officials are not going to attend on the pretext that they were advised of it too late”, AFP news agency reported. The trip was cancelled “at the last minute” after a Burundi advance team in Libreville told Buyoya that Ndayikengurukiye would not attend the meeting, presidential spokesman Apollinaire Gahungu told IRIN on Thursday. “The president was at the airport when he was informed that Jean-Bosco Ndayikengurukiye said he would not attend the meeting,” he added. The Burundi president said he had been prepared to go to Libreville, where South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma and a senior delegation from the DRC had already arrived on Wednesday, “to study how to begin negotiations with the rebels, in particular the FDD”. The FDD and fellow-Hutu rebel Forces national pour la liberation (FNL) have refused to participate in the Arusha peace process, and intensive negotiations to thrash out a ceasefire agreement between them and the government have so far failed to produce results.

The meeting was intended to follow up on a meeting in Libreville in January when Gabon’s President Omar Bongo and the late DRC president, Laurent-Desire Kabila, facilitated a meeting between Buyoya and Ndayikengurukiye, in an effort to work towards a Burundi ceasefire in the context of a broader settlement between Burundi and the DRC. Kinshasa has long accused of Burundi of aggression against it and of having armed troops on Congolese territory. Burundi, for its part, denies being an aggressor in the DRC conflict, but says it has security concerns in the DRC, particularly in light of alleged DRC-government support for Burundi rebel groups. Two Burundi battalions were withdrawn from around Pweto (in Katanga Province, southwestern DRC) and another from Kalemie (also in Katanga, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika) earlier this month, according to military sources in the Congo. Two battalions were still in place, in order to protect Burundi from attack by rebels operating inside the DRC, they added.