CNDD-FDD rejects Paris conference

The Burundi rebel Conseil National pour la Defense de la Democratie-Forces pour la Defense de la Democratie (CNDD-FDD) has rejected the donor conference being held in the French capital, Paris, on Monday and Tuesday (11-12 December) to consider means of supporting Burundi’s peace process. In an open letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, dated 27 November but distributed to the media on Monday, it cautioned that the conference was taking place within a “chaotic and uncertain” political context, and expressed concern that the donor conference would place the international community’s final seal of approval on agreements reached at in Arusha, Tanzania, on 28 August 2000, which the CNDD-FDD considers inconclusive. “No one can reasonably deny that there was no agreement between Burundian political parties on 28 August,” the letter stated. In an interview with the BBC on Friday, CNDD-FDD spokesman Gerome Ndiho declared that assisting a government established in accordance with the Arusha agreement would amount to endorsing “a government rejected by citizens”. Ndiho said he considered the Arusha agreement “confusing”, on the grounds that “most of the organisations saw the texts of the agreement after they had been changed”. The International Donors Conference on Burundi opened in Paris on Monday in the presence of the Burundi peace process facilitator Nelson Mandela and Burundi President Pierre Buyoya. Organised under the patronage of Mandela, the UNDP and the World Bank, the conference has been convened to examine what kind of support must be brought to the reconstruction of Burundi following the Arusha agreement signed by 19 delegations, but not the rebel groups CNDD-FDD and Forces nationales de liberation (FNL).