UN team to recommend inquiry into massacres

UN Assistant Secretary-General Tuliameni Kalamoh announced on Saturday that he would recommend to the UN Security Council the formation of a commission of inquiry into massacres that may have been committed since Burundi's independence in 1962.

"We shall make that report, we do not know what the reaction of the Security Council would be," he told reporters in the Burundi capital, Bujumbura.

He was speaking at the end of a weeklong visit to Burundi, at the head of a delegation that came to establish whether or not a judicial commission of inquiry should be set up to investigate the massacres.

He said that all Burundian leaders and other representatives of the people that he had met during his visit had said it was advisable for the UN Security Council to establish an international judicial commission of inquiry.

He added that his delegation was encouraged by the firm commitment of the Burundian leaders to promote reconciliation and consolidate peace.

During the visit, the delegation held talks with the signatories of the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Accord, senior government and military officials, representatives of civil society, judicial institutions and the UN country team.

Several parties that held talks with Kalomoh's team deplored what they said was the UN's delay in the setting up the commission.

In his memorandum to the delegation, the chairman of a political party, the Movement for the Rehabilitation of Citizens, Epitace Bayaganakandi, said the inquiry team should be in place for the general election, scheduled for October, to ensure that people who may be implicated do not contest.

Bayaganakandi said the delegation "should not be assessing the need to establish the commission but only its feasibility". He added that the establishment of the commission was already provided for in the Arusha accord.

Some 19 civic society organisations also issued a statement expressing concern over the delay in the setting up of the commission, and the lack of an alternative should the Security Council reject Kalomoh's recommendation.

Burundi is in the second phase of a three-year transitional period that was set up under the accord that was signed in Arusha, Tanzania, by 19 Burundian groups, including political parties, the government and the military. The accord recommends the setting up of an international commission of inquiry to investigate massacres committed in Burundi from 1962 to August 2000, when the accord was signed.

A previous UN inquiry team had, in 1996, investigated massacres that occurred in 1993. One of its recommendations was the establishment of another commission of inquiry that would not limit itself to that period but also investigate other crimes committed in the course of the country's civil war.

If established, the commission would qualify the crime, determine who is responsible and submit a report to the Security Council.