Bujumbura — The facilitator in the Burundi's peace process, Mr Charles Nqakula and the FNL leader, Agathon Rwasa, have reached an agreement. Yesterday, the two-day talks between these two sides ended in Dar es Salaam. They agreed that the talks between the government of Burundi and the PALIPEHUTU-FNL are slated for 26 February. PALIPEHUTU-FNL and the government will have to analyse if the deals that they reached in 2006 can be implemented or if there is a need for another deal. PALIPEHUTU-FNL leaders do not reject the possibility of continuing talks within the Joint Verification and Monitoring Mechanism.

The last talks concerned PALIPEHUTU-FNL and the facilitator. In July, PALIPEHUTU-FNL rejected the facilitation of Charles Nqakula whom they considered as biased. Recently, leaders of PALIPEHUTU-FNL accepted that Nqakula could continue playing the role of the facilitator provided that he changes his methodology. In the recent talks, Charles Nqakula promised to provide food to the FNL combatants. He also promised to pay the debts that this movement incurred to feed its combatants. The two sides also agreed on the setup of a political directorate to help the facilitation between PALIPEHUTU-FNL and the government. The Burundian Civil society, the United Nations, the African Union and European Union, South Africa and Tanzania are part of this political directorate which comes to help the facilitation team that PALIPEHUTU-FNL blamed for its partiality.

Neither the facilitation team nor the government of Burundi has provided food to the FNL combatants which constituted one of the points that led this movement to return to the bush in July 2007 after a year of inaction of the Joint Verification and Monitoring Mechanism. Currently, there are more than 2,000 so called FNL dissidents in two sites of Bubanza province. The future of this group remains uncertain if the current talks between the government and PALIPEHUTU-FNL successfully lead to the implementation of the 2006 peace deals.