Plenary session of IMC opens in Arusha

The plenary session of the first substantive meeting of the Implementation Monitoring Committee (IMC) following up Burundi’s peace agreement opened on Wednesday in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha. “Consultations were going on Wednesday and there was not much, yet, to report about it,” a diplomatic source told IRIN. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative to the Great Lakes region, Ambassador Berhanu Dinka, called on members at the opening of the session on Wednesday “not to disappoint people’s hopes”, the independent Hirondelle news agency reported. “The people of Burundi, many of whose lives have been destroyed or made meaningless by years of violence and war, are waiting to see the peace dividend now that the Arusha agreement has been signed,” he said.

“We should therefore strive not to disappoint the expectations of the international community and, more importantly, that of the Burundian people who are desperately seeking a return to peace and stability in their country,” Dinka added. He said that since IMC’s inception on 27 November 2000, there had been “several important developments” regarding Burundi, notably, “generous donor pledges” at a Paris conference and “encouraging developments” on ceasefire talks between the Burundi government and dissident Hutu rebels. The 29-member IMC is composed of representatives of the 19 Burundian signatories to the peace agreement, six members of civil society in Burundi and one representative each from the UN, OAU, the Great Lakes region, and the donor community. The current meeting hopes to adopt draft rules of the procedure, nominate representatives to the executive council and draw up an implementation timetable.