Burundi rebels stay mum
2004-02-13 20:24
Bujumbura - Leaders of the last rebel group still active in Burundi say they will refuse to meet President Domitien Ndayizeye again as long as government forces keep up an offensive.
"We say we cannot sit down with Ndayizeye as long as he breaks the promise he made in the Netherlands to cease hostilities once he returned to Bujumbura," Pasteur Habimana, spokesperson for the National Liberation Forces (FNL) said.
He was reacting to reports that the FNL and Ndayizeye, who held a landmark meeting in the Netherlands in January, would get together again next week.
During the last meeting, the first since civil war broke out in 1993, both sides agreed that fighting between the FNL and the Forces for the Defence of Democracy, another armed Hutu group now allied with the government, should cease.
Stop offensive
Habimana said that in addition to this undertaking, Ndayizeye made a "secret" promise to stop an offensive against the FNL in Bujumbura Rural, the province that surrounds the capital, in return for the rebel group's recognition of Ndayizeye as rightful head of state.
Ndayizeye's spokesperson, Pancrace Cimpaye, described the FNL's declaration as "premature, because this new meeting hasn't yet been confirmed."
At least 300 000 people have been killed in Burundi's civil war.
Like the FDD, all of the other Hutu groups who took up arms against a government and army dominated by the Tutsi minority have now signed peace accords.