Council welcomes agreement on transitional leadership

Members of the UN Security Council on Wednesday welcomed the announcement of an agreement on the transitional leadership in Burundi, which calls for the current president and a Hutu leader to each serve 18 months as the head of a three-year transitional government. “Members of the Council hoped that all parties in Burundi will support this government and set the transitional government as scheduled,” the Council President, Ambassador Wang Yingfan of China, said in a press statement. The statement followed a closed-door session during which the Council was briefed on the situation in Burundi by UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Kieran Prendergast. The statement strongly urged the armed groups to cease hostilities immediately and join the peace process already underway and asked the international community to continue to provide assistance to the transitional government once it was set up. Council members also expressed their support for the efforts by the facilitator of the Burundi peace talks, Nelson Mandela, and the leaders of the Great Lakes region.