Burundi ceasefire talks open today

DAR ES SALAAM -- Burundian rebels are due to begin the first face-to-face talks with President Pierre Buyoya's government in South Africa today to end eight years of civil war in the central African nation, according to press reports here yesterday.

The two main Hutu rebel groups -- Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) and the National Liberation Forces (FNL) -- are expected to discuss a ceasefire with the government, the state-owned Daily News said, quoting senior Tanzanian mediator Mark Bomani.

Neither rebel group signed a peace accord reached last August among the government, parliament and political parties on both sides in Burundi's civil war.

The talks will be held in Pretoria and will be supervised by Deputy President Jacob Zuma, Bomani said.

He said a summit would be held on a date to be announced after the ceasefire talks, and former South African president Nelson Mandela, the facilitator of the Burundi peace process, would brief Great Lakes region leaders on that occasion.

The ceasefire talks come as the Hutu rebels are demanding the release of all political prisoners and the dismantling of so-called "regroupment camps" before they can negotiate an end to their guerrilla war.

In 1999, the Burundian government forcibly regrouped hundreds of thousands of people, mostly from the majority Hutu ethnic group, into camps in a bid to isolate the rebels.

Many of the camps were dismantled last year amid growing criticism of Burundi's human rights record by Mandela and leaders of the Great Lakes region.

The war in Burundi erupted in 1993 when soldiers from the minority Tutsi ethnic group assassinated the country's first democratically elected president from the Hutu majority, Melchior Ndadaye.

The war has cost more than 200 000 lives since it erupted and forced more than a million others either to be displaced internally or flee into exile. -- Sapa-AFP