Exiled pro-Tutsi leader returns home

The president of the Tutsi monarchist party PRP, Matthias Hitimana, last week returned to Bujumbura after five years in exile, news organisations reported. He was quoted by the local Bonesha radio as saying that his party would join the government despite the “imposition” of President Pierre Buyoya and Domitien Ndayizeye by Burundi peace facilitator Nelson Mandela. He said that he will during this visit, find ways in which the group of eight parties (G8) would remain united in order to continue to defend the interests of the group.

“This group - that is to say the group that supports ‘president’ Colonel Epitace Bayaganakandi [for the transitional period leadership] - we have decided that it would be necessary to all the same work in a sense aimed at arriving at agreement. That is to say, an agreement which includes all pro-negotiations political parties and the anti-negotiations ones, and signed with a transitional government. That is what principally is bringing me to Bujumbura,” he added.