Union lends backing to regional peace effort for Burundi

Date: 10/10/1996

By Elizabeth Wise

IN ITS continued efforts to help stop a tinder-box in Burundi from becoming a bonfire, the EU will this week join hands with nations of what is arguably the most volatile region in the world.

As the leaders of Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zaire prepare for a summit in Tanzania this Saturday (12 October), EU officials are stressing that they will do all they can to help move the peace process forward.

The region's leaders last gathered on 31 July at an emergency summit where they decided to levy sanctions on Bujumbura after Major Pierre Buyoya, an officer in Burundi's Tutsi-dominated army, ousted President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya (a Hutu) in a coup following renewed ethnic clashes which provoked a spate of murders.

This weekend they will consider whether to ease or extend an embargo they have imposed on the tiny nation wedged between them - and have invited Buyoya to attend the summit to explain why he ended a three-year-old democracy struggling to bring the country out of decades of instability and bloodshed, and what he intends to do to restore it.

Under pressure from other governments in the region, Buyoya has lifted his ban on political parties and promised to restore the national assembly.

But the international community wants more signs that the country is heading for stability rather than war.

EU special envoy Aldo Ajello's mission is to help countries in the region to convince Burundi's new military government to begin negotiations with all the nation's political parties.

The Union's contribution has so far consisted of putting its political weight behind central and east African governments, and providing humanitarian and financial aid.

EU pledges since early 1995 have included 5.5 million ecu for health programmes, 2.4 million ecu for the country's treasury, 700,000 ecu from the Union's 'human rights and democracy' budget, 405,000 ecu to UN observers and 1.5 million ecu to OAU observers.

In late 1994, when Rwanda was still traumatised by massacres and Burundi, Zaire and Tanzania were reeling from the influx of Rwandan refugees, the Union offered 18 million ecu to help countries taking in refugees. But security problems prevented some of the money from being disbursed.

In June this year, Development Commissioner João de Deus Pinheiro urged EU member states to suspend development cooperation with Burundi until the political situation became more stable.

Burundi is still entitled to large amounts of EU development money. However, much of it remains unspent. Of the 112 million ecu earmarked for the country in the Union's seventh European Development Fund (EDF) package, only 31 million ecu has been assigned to projects and just 23 million actually disbursed.

But food and humanitarian aid have continued to flow to the region, to the tune of tens of millions of ecu over the past three years.

Critics nevertheless accuse the Union of failing to commit itself to building peace in a visibly convincing way.

Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring effectively ruled out any possibility of sending EU peacekeepers when he met Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, the UN-appointed mediator for the region, at the UN general assembly last month. “There is no military solution,” he insisted.

Current EU proposals to support UN human rights monitors stop short of sending personnel or troops to the region and, while the Commission's delegation office in Bujumbura is open, it is only manned by secretaries. The delegates themselves are in Europe while they wait for security conditions to improve (although the two ECHO officers have stayed behind in Burundi).

Burundi's government has appealed for foreign lawyers to help restore the country's judicial system in the wake of the massacres in 1993 and 1994 which resulted in the loss of the core of the legal communities in both Rwanda and Burundi.

But so far, no European lawyers have gone to the region, despite repeated appeals from Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Emma Bonino and a Union agreement in March last year to help Burundi re-establish a state of law.

The European Parliament has, in its joint assembly with representatives from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, passed two resolutions condemning Buyoya, and has asked EU governments not to recognise his “extremist” government. It has also asked Burundi's neighbours to extend their embargo on Buyoya to include a ban on arms shipments.

EU government statements have, so far, been much less hard-hitting.

“The Union remains deeply concerned about the continuing crisis in Burundi and its humanitarian impact,” said an Irish presidency statement issued last week as Ajello left for the latest in a series of trips to the region.

It will certainly not be his last.