Gervais Abayeho
22 October 2007
Bunjumbura — The spokesman for Burundi's Palipehutu-FNL rebel group has said talks aimed at implementing a ceasefire deal signed with the government in September last year would be meaningless without their participation.
"The meeting is meaningless and its outcome will be meaningless", Pasteur Habimana told The New Times on the weekend by the telephone from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
"It's like celebrating a wedding without a bride", he said.
The FNL delegation to the ceasefire talks disappeared spectacularly in the bush last July on the grounds that their security could not be guaranteed. The move raised fears that fighting would resume in the tiny central African nation of 7 million.
The rebels have ignored calls from the mediation to return to the negotiating table, accusing instead chief mediator, South Africa's Security minister Charles Nqakula of bias, an accusation he denies.
"They were invited to take part in this meeting; it's a matter of deep regret that they didn't take up this invitation", Nqakula said as he opened the meeting.
"But again I ask them to come back to the negotiating table unconditionally".
Following the deadlock, hundreds of FNL dissident combatants "committed to peace" have reportedly been coming out the bush to seek protection from government forces.
Clashes between FNL rival factions around the capital and in the countryside have led to dozens being killed.
According to Nqakula, those dissident rebels need food and shelter and they could be a threat to public security as they are armed.
"There is acceptance all around that indeed we must engage with this situation to stop the possibility of it developing into a humanitarian crisis," he said, adding that the mediation would establish assembly points for combatants who have come forward to ask for assistance.
Other pending issues to be tackled have to do with immunity of rebel leaders expected to come home from exile and the liberation of political and war prisoners.
Another contentious point is the political future of the Palipehutu-FNL men.
Burundi is trying to emerge from 14 years of civil war which has killed over 250,000 persons, most of them civilians.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported yesterday that nine fighters have been killed in new clashes between two factions of FNL.
Quoting Burundi's army spokesman, Colonel Adolphe Manirakiza, the agency reported the Monday battle took place in the Kabezi district, about 15 km (nine miles) south of the capital Bujumbura, after combatants loyal to the leader of the ethnic Hutu Forces for National Liberation (FNL) attacked a camp on Sunday.
The camp was sheltering nearly 400 fighters from an FNL faction that opposes FNL leader Agathon Rwasa, said the army spokesman, Colonel Adolphe Manirakiza.
The fighting was the second major clash between Rwasa's forces and the splinter group. The latest clash killed about 20 rebels in a northern suburb of Bujumbura in September.
An FNL spokesman accused the government and South African mediators of supporting the dissident FNL group in a bid to weaken Rwasa.
"The people who claim to be dissidents have been created by the government and we will combat them," FNL spokesman Pasteur Habimana told Reuters by telephone.
The FNL insurgency is seen as the final barrier to lasting stability in the tiny coffee-growing nation, where more than a decade of civil war has killed some 300,000.
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