UPRONA faction says draft accord should be torn up

The Tutsi-dominated UPRONA party faction, led by Charles Mukasi, on Monday said that the draft peace accord should be “torn up”. AFP quoted him as saying the draft was “a bad document that the people of Burundi must immediately tear up without further ado”. Mukasi’s wing has never taken part in the Arusha talks, saying it could not sit with members of parties who are “racist and genocidal”. The chairman of negotiating Committee Two on democracy and good governance, Professor Nicholas Haysom, told IRIN he hoped the parties involved in the peace process would agree on outstanding issues next week, when talks resume on 7 August. “The problem is that the parties all have expectations which are mutually exclusive,” he said. “The facilitation team had to draw a middle ground which axed out interests of parties, so definitely they could not easily agree with the draft.”