Pro-Hutu grouping demands integration into army

Six groups belonging to the group of seven Hutu parties (G7) at the weekend sent Burundi peace facilitator, Nelson Mandela, “conditionalities and guarantees for the setting up of transitional institutions”. “As long as the [pro-Tutsi bloc] G10 continue to reject the sharing of power in the real sense, the G7 is convinced that there will never be peace and Burundi will continue to experience all the calamities of this world,” NetPress news agency quoted the group as saying. They asked for the integration of their armed wings into the new defence forces on an “equal footing” with the current security forces. They also demanded “the lifting, beforehand, of all the reservations expressed by the government and the G10 on the peace agreement”.

According to the group, the country’s crisis could be summarised as follows: “A group of 15 to 20 high-ranking army officers who hold real power in Burundi and are well known by those knowledgeable of the Burundi political scene came up with their own conditions, which must first of all be accepted by the group of 10 Tutsis parties (G10) and its transitional presidential candidate and approved by the facilitator, heads of state of the sub- region, donors and the UN who are the guarantors of the agreement”.