Burundi coup plotters unmasked
2006-03-07 14:32
Bujumbura - Burundi's President Pierre
Nkurunziza has accused three unnamed politicians of plotting a
coup against him, sparking fears in a country with a long
history of political assassinations.
The report has stirred speculation over who could be behind
the threat, in a nation tasting peace for the first time in the
12 years since the last coup sparked a cycle of ethnic violence
that killed 300 000.
"That group of three men has already held clandestine
meetings with three officers of national defence forces and
three officers of the national police in order to achieve their
dirty goal," Nkurunziza said in remarks broadcast by state radio
late on Monday.
Nkurunziza refused to reveal their names but said their
conversations were recorded by his intelligence services. Some
of the meetings had taken place outside of the country, he said.
"What is very important is that these people are known by
the army and the police. What I am trying to do is to convince
them to come back to reason and give up their plan," he said.
Since winning independence from Belgium in 1962, Burundi has
mostly been ruled by military hardliners from the Tutsi minority
who took power in a coup.
The killing of the country's first democratically elected
Hutu president in a failed 1993 coup plunged the tiny Central
African country into a decade of civil war pitting rebels from
the Hutu majority against the Tutsi elite.
Nkurunziza - a Hutu who has preached ethnic inclusivity -
came to power in August last year after a series of polls won by
his party, the former rebel Forces for the Defence of Democracy
(FDD), as part of a United Nations-backed peace plan to end the war.
Analysts have said he could face trouble from the
traditional Tutsi hardliners reluctant to give up their grip on
power, and also from Hutus who are not happy to have Tutsis
alongside them in government.
The country's achievement of peace, aside from sporadic
clashes between the army and the last remaining rebel group, the
Hutu Forces for National Liberation, has been a symbol of hope
for the volatile Great Lakes region.
But Nkurunziza faces a series of challenges in rebuilding,
not least of which is poverty and a moribund economy. Adding to
that woe is a drought which is shrinking food stocks and has
killed at least 200 people since December.
- Reuters