20000117

Mandela to launch renewed Burundi peace bid

ARUSHA (Tanzania): Former South African President Nelson Mandela will launch his bid to bring peace to Burundi on Sunday when he meets government and opposition leaders in Tanzania.

Although many of the participants in the peace talks say they hope a deal can be found quickly, Mandela faces a huge challenge to end a long-running and brutal civil war which has devastated the tiny central African nation.

Around 200,000 people, most of them civilians, have lost their lives since the outbreak of war in 1993 between Hutu rebels and the army, dominated by the minority Tutsi ethnic group.

Peace talks began in Arusha in June 1998, but dragged on with little progress until the death of their original mediator, Tanzania's first president Julius Nyerere, in October last year.

Mandela's appointment to replace Nyerere could kickstart the flagging talks, but with the main rebel group, CNDD-FDD, still excluded from the process, hopes for a ceasefire remain slim.

Government sources say direct negotiations with CNDD-FDD began in secret last year, but the two sides appear far apart and the civil war has intensified in the last six months.

The government has forced hundreds of thousands of Hutu civilians into ill-equipped camps around the country in an effort to flush the rebels out.

Amnesty International, which fiercely opposes the camps, accused the army earlier this month of killing 43 civilians, including women and children, in one camp near the capital.

The rebels are also accused of indiscriminate massacres of civilians, the most recent atttack coming just last Friday, when 18 people were killed and another ten injured in a rebel ambush on a bus and two cars 60 km (40 miles) north of Bujumbura, according to government sources.

Mandela, who was due to spend just a few hours in Arusha before flying to New York, said in December he was hopeful a deal could be reached early in the New Year.

The war has brought Burundi's economy to its knees, and the government appears desperate for a deal which could unlock donor support. The opposition is impatient to get its hands on power.

But there are still major obstacles to any peace accord.

Many Tutsis are reluctant to give up their control of the army and government, fearing a repeat of the genocide which tore apart neighbouring Rwanda in 1994, when Hutu rulers led the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis.

Burundi's majority Hutus, on the other hand, have suffered years of repression by Tutsi soldiers and distrust on both sides still runs high.-Reuters