Council calls on rebels to join peace process

The United Nations Security Council has called on Burundi rebel groups still fighting in the country’s eight year-long civil war to lay down their arms immediately and join the peace process.

In a statement issued on Thursday by the Council president, Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser of Mexico, the 15-member body emphasised that the continuing fighting against the legitimate administration was "totally unjustifiable and unacceptable", and threatened the implementation of the country’s peace process.

The statement endorsed the legitimacy of the transitional government headed by President Pierre Buyoya and paid tribute to the signatories of the peace agreement signed in August 2000.

Referring to the transitional government inaugurated in November 2001 for a period of three years, the Council stressed that while the transition was going ahead according to the established time-frame, "time is of the essence for the rebels finally to join the peace process".

The Council also welcomed efforts to "normalise relations" between Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It encouraged swift implementation of efforts to ensure that territory of the DRC was not used for rebel attacks on Burundi, and for the withdrawal of Burundi troops from DRC – measures agreed to by both countries on 7 January.

Burundi has had troops in the DRC since 1998, to guard against reported cross-border attacks by Burundi rebels of the Forces pour la defense de la democratie.

The announcement from the Security Council follows an appeal by Buyoya on 5 February to the Council to help end the fighting in his country and to keep the peace process on track. "We asked the neighbouring countries... [and] the international community to pressure the rebels, to enter into negotiations," AP reported him as telling journalists after addressing the Council.

Earlier, on 16 January, the Council also appealed to the Burundi rebels to cease hostilities. AFP reported diplomatic sources as saying on Thursday that this latest appeal was "a final warning".

Meanwhile, in a briefing on refugee matters, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers told the Security Council that if a cease-fire could be effected across Burundi, hundreds of thousands of Burundi refugees currently in Tanzania and elsewhere would seek to return home, the UN reported on Friday.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Burundi since war broke out in October 1993, following the killing of Melchior Ndadaye, the country's first democratically elected leader, who was a Hutu. In August 2000 a peace accord was signed in Arusha, but the country's two main rebel groups - the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces pour la defense de la democratie and the Forces nationale de liberation - have refused to observe the cease-fire agreed under the accord.