Army says Hutu, not rebel, integration agreed

Defence Minister Colonel Cyrille Ndayirukiye said on Friday the proposal by Burundi peace facilitator Nelson Mandela that ethnic Hutus and Tutsis should be integrated into the national army on a 50-50 basis had been accepted by the government. However, the 50 percent Hutu representation did not imply a 50 percent rebel integration in the army, the Burundi news agency ABP quoted Ndayirukiye as saying on national radio. “The mediator told us it would be an integration of Hutus and Tutsis, and not a mixture of 50 percent rebels and 50 percent of the army,” he said, adding that “if that had been the case, we would not have felt embarrassed to tell him that we do not accept it.” The manner of achieving Mandela’s 50-50 Hutu-Tutsi proposal was still to be worked out, and if a 50 percent rebel representation were the facilitator’s vision of things, then “that should be negotiated, just like the implementation modalities,” Ndayirikuye added.

Meanwhile, ‘Committee 5’ of the Burundi peace process began sitting again in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha on Monday. Committee five, which is dealing with guarantees on the implementation and supervision of any peace accord that emerges from the Arusha process, is scheduled to sit for seven days, with all 19 parties to the negotiations represented.