Elections calendar issued

The chairman of Burundi's Independent Electoral Commission, Paul Ngarambe, has announced the country's elections timetable, which is scheduled to end on 19 August with presidential polls. The country's new president would be sworn in on 26 August, Ngarambe said in the capital, Bujumbura, upon his return from Uganda - where a daylong emergency summit on Friday of Africa's Great Lakes leaders extended the country's transition until August. He said parliamentary elections would be held on 4 July and those for the Senate - the upper chamber of parliament - on 29 July. However, he said, communal elections would be held on 23 September, as they were "difficult to organise because they require a lot of things and much attention". Ngarambe said his commission had previously been unable to issue an electoral calendar because the country's electoral code and the communal law had not been promulgated. President Domitien Ndayizeye signed them into law last week. "This calendar is now unchangeable as all means to hold elections are in place," Ngarambe said. Burundian political parties have begun meetings to propose electoral candidates. The electoral law allows for two-week campaign periods before polls. The elections would bring an end to a transitional government in Burundi and usher in a democratic political dispensation after 12 years of civil war, in which some 300,000 civilians have died and hundreds of thousands others displaced.