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Accord with Burundian rebels on ceasefire terms: government
Bujumbura (AFP) Jul 28, 2006 The Burundian government announced Friday it had agreed on the terms of a ceasefire with the country's last active rebel movement, in spite of concerns by the insurgents over the sharing of government and military posts. Burundi's Interior Minister Evariste Ndayishimiye said the government and the National Liberation Forces (FNL) planned to sign the ceasefire agreement next week, but the rebels said some sticking points in the truce must be resolved first. "We agreed with the FNL on all the terms of the ceasefire accord ... we are only waiting for the regional heads of state to meet so that the agreement can be signed," Ndayishimiye said. "This summit is scheduled for next week in Dar es Salaam," he added. But FNL spokesman Pasteur Habimana said there were some outstanding issues regarding representation in the government and the army that were yet to be resolved in the South Africa-mediated talks being held in Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam. "There is a ceasefire project, but before signing this agreement, there are issues that have to be resolved," Habimana told AFP from Dar es Salaam. "We have to agree on the sharing of government posts, senate and the national assembly, the army and the police," he said. The sides have tussled over the sharing of military slots, with the FNL demanding 60 percent representation in the national army, a move that the government has flatly rejected, in addition to an expanded government. The FNL, the only one of Burundi's seven Hutu rebel groups to remain outside a 2000 peace process, wants the army to reflect the country's ethnic make-up, mediators said. That would give the 85-percent Hutu majority vast superiority in numbers to the 14-percent Tutsi minority, which had dominated the government and armed forces from independence until the adoption last year of a power-sharing constitution. Under the constitution, army representation is split equally between the two ethnic groups. The tiny central African nation is still struggling to recover from the devastation of a 13-year-old civil war that has claimed some 300,000 lives since it erupted with the assassination of the country's first democratically elected president, a member of the Hutu majority, by members of the then minority Tutsi-dominated army. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Nuclear Space Technology at Space-Travel.com
Israeli army chief taken to hospital for tests: report
Jerusalem (AFP) Jul 28, 2006 The Israeli army chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, fell ill Friday and was taken to hospital for tests, Channel 10 television reported. |
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