DATE=2/22/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=MANDELA - BURUNDI (L)
NUMBER=2-259450
BYLINE=SCOTT STEARNS
DATELINE=ARUSHA
INTERNET=YES
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Former South African President Nelson Mandela
says peace talks on Burundi risk losing international
support if delegates do not demonstrate their
seriousness about ending years of ethnic violence.
The new mediator for the conflict scolded Burundian
leaders at a meeting in Tanzania Tuesday. V-O-A's
Scott Stearns reports.
TEXT: Mr. Mandela had a simple request. He wanted to
know if delegates to these talks agreed that his
mediation team should now come up with compromise
proposals to try and close some of the distance around
plans for a transitional government and a new national
army. Instead, he heard speaker after speaker
denounce their opponents. One delegate even rejected
the compromises before they'd been drafted.
That's what happens at Burundi peace talks. Mr.
Mandela is new to the process and after several
inspirational speeches, he now faces the more
difficult task of bringing together a political class
woven by deception and mistrust.
Burundi's government and army are run by the ethnic
minority Tutsi. They're fighting members of the
majority Hutu who make up the bulk of the rebellion
against them.
It's an increasingly factionalized conflict that's
difficult to understand, and even harder to resolve.
At several points Tuesday, Mr. Mandela appeared to
lose his temper with all the grandstanding
(posturing), telling one delegate he risked making
himself irrelevant and suggesting to another that he
was wasting the meeting's time.
/// FIRST MANDELA ACT ///
Other people may say you are irresponsible - I
will not say so myself. And I will urge you to
behave in a way that will minimize the danger of
you being dismissed as irresponsible people.
/// END ACT ///
Mr. Mandela says the mediation team runs out of money
after this round of talks. Unless Burundian leaders
show they are serous about some sort of compromise,
Mr. Mandela says the international community may soon
see them as politicians who are only interested in
their own power and not the lives of the people who
they claim to represent.
/// SECOND MANDELA ACT ///
There is a view from people who have been very close
to this situation, that in Burundi you do not have a
patriotic leadership that thinks about the nation as a
whole. Political leaders are thinking about their own
individual position. We are dealing with a leadership
that does not really care for the people of Burundi.
More are being slaughtered. The more you delay the
more innocent people will die.
/// END ACT ///
This latest round of violence began when paratroopers
killed Burundi's first democratically elected
president in 1993. Since then, it's estimated that
more than 200-thousand people have died in ethnic
violence.
These talks continue Wednesday without Mr. Mandela.
He says what's lacking among delegates is a sense of
urgency that they must work harder to bring peace to
Burundi. (Signed)
NEB/SS/ENE-T/gm/africa
22-Feb-2000 14:41 PM EDT (22-Feb-2000 1941 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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