Little progress made as Ndayizeye-FNL talks end

Talks between Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye and a delegation of the Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) rebel faction led by Agathon Rwasa ended on Tuesday in the Netherlands without a compromise being reached, an FNL official said. "Our delegation rejected Ndayizeye's proposal for the FNL to join the government," Pasteur Habimana, the FNL spokesman, told IRIN on Wednesday in the capital, Bujumbura. The talks, which began on Sunday in Oisterwijk, Netherlands, marked the first direct meeting between Ndayizeye and Rwasa's FNL. The faction remains the only rebel movement that has not signed a ceasefire agreement with the transitional government of Burundi. The talks were aimed at convincing Rwasa's FNL to join the country's peace process. During the talks, Habimana said, the FNL maintained that it wanted to hold talks with representatives of the minority Tutsi community in Burundi. The Tutsis have led Burundi most of the time since its independence from Belgium in 1962. "We repeated several times that the FNL does not recognise the government set up by the Arusha process," Habimana said. He added: "For us, the Burundi problem is an ethnic one, the people who went to Arusha have negotiated the sharing of posts. The FNL wants this problem of ethnicity, which has caused so many deaths, to be finally solved. That is the reason why we suggest a mutual forgiveness between Hutus and Tutsis and agree on a social pact, so that both ethnic groups live in peace forever." He said the FNL would always be available for talks with Ndayizeye. "He proved to us his goodwill to listen to FNL claims. There is no way we can refuse other invitations from him," he said. Habimana added that his movement would like to see former Burundian presidents Pierre Buyoya and Jean Baptiste Bagaza involved in negotiations between the FNL and representatives of the Tutsi community. "We always say that the Tutsi regime oppressed the Hutu population, so Buyoya and Bagaza are somehow responsible for this oppression, this is why we want them present when these talks will be held," Habimana said. The Burundian news agency, ABP, reported on Wednesday that Ndayizeye and the FNL discussed ways of suspending hostilities. ABP was citing a communiqué issued at the end of the talks, which said the goodwill demonstrated by both sides would enable them to end the fighting. APB reported that at the end of the talks, the two sides agreed on four points: To establish an international commission of inquiry into the death of the Roman Catholic apostolic nuncio, Michael Courtney (who was killed on 29 December 2003 allegedly by FNL rebels), without hampering a national inquiry already in place; the need to end violence so that a climate of trust conducive to dialogue is established; to end ongoing clashes between Rwasa's FNL and Pierre Nkurunziza’s Conseil national de defense de la democratie-Forces pour la defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD); and to hold another round of talks soon to discuss the peace process in Burundi.