Tutsi parties complain as regional summit opens in Dar

A regional heads of state summit on Burundi opened on Wednesday in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, but three key Tutsi-dominated parties in Burundi complained they had been left out. "We would have gone to Dar es Salaam," Zénon Nimubona, a spokesman for PARENA, one of the Tutsi parties, told IRIN. "But we were not invited," The two other groups are MSP-Inkinzo and MRC-RURENZANGEMERO. Regional leaders in Dar es Salaam are expected to review progress made to end Burundi's decade-long civil war, which has claimed at least 300,000 Burundian lives, and ratify a recent post-transition power-sharing agreement signed by 20 Burundian political groups but not signed by Tutsi-dominated groups that say they were excluded. Representatives of three other political groups in Burundi were invited to the summit and are attending. They are the Front pour la démocratie au Burundi (FRODEBU), the Union pour le progrès national (UPRONA) political parties, and the former main former rebel movement Conseil national de défense de la démocratie-Forces de défense de la démocratie (CNDD-FDD) of Pierre Nkurunziza. "Three political parties only cannot decide for a whole nation where there are about thirty parties," Alphonse Rugambarara, the leader of MSP-INKINZO, said on Tuesday when confirming that his party had not been invited to the summit. The African presidents attending the summit's opening include Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Domitien Ndayizeye of Burundi, Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Joachim Chissano of Mozambique, Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia and Tanzania's Benjamin Mkapa. Ethiopia, Rwanda and Kenya are also represented. Vice president Gilbert Bukenya represents Uganda, the current chair of the Great Lakes initiative on Burundi. The facilitator of the Burundi peace process is South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma. Mkapa is chairing the summit, in the absence of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Tanzania is the vice-chair of the regional initiative on Burundi. Other Tutsi-dominated parties - RADDES, PRP, PSD, ANADDE and PACONA - which are allied to UPRONA, sent delegates to the Dar es Salaam summit even though they were not invited. The Pretoria agreement, which was signed on 6 August, provides for a government and national assembly that would be 60 percent Hutu and 40 percent Tutsi. It also provides for two vice-presidents from different ethnic communities and political groups. The summit agenda includes the election process and timetable. The elections are supposed to be held by 31 October, at the end of the three-year transitional period. Nimubona said PARENA was not afraid of going to elections in the event that the summit resolves that elections be held before 1 November. The spokesman of MRC-RURENZANGEMERO, Laurent Nzeyimana, said he is hopeful that the summit's results would be in accordance to a peace and reconciliation agreement signed in August 2000 in Arusha, Tanzania, under which the transitional government in Burundi was set up. The transitional period is due to end by October with democratic elections. "We need to go to general elections", he said. "We are tired of this eleven-year transition," he added, referring to when the current conflict started. Diplomats said that leaders at the summit are also likely to discuss Friday's massacre of at least 160 Congolese Tutsi refugees in Burundi. "The elections are still on track for October, as scheduled, and we hope everything will work out fine," Aloise Mbonayo, Burundi's ambassador to Tanzania, told IRIN. Zuma is to release a progress report and the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative to Burundi, Carolyn McAskie, is to release another report on her talks with the rebel Forces nationales de liberation led by Agathon Rwasa. Rwasa's rebel movement is the only one that has not yet laid down it arms.