Prospects of a peace settlement between Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza and those challenging his legitimacy appear remote in the troubled East African nation after his spokesman ruled out talking to ‘the coup plotters’.

In an interview in Nairobi on Saturday, a defiant Gervais Abayeho who has a long standing relationship with the president told the Sunday Nation that they would not be part of any negotiations where certain opposition figures are present, a stance that will only serve to escalate the stalemate.

“We are not ready to discuss with sponsors of acts of terror, people who have sold their conscience and patriotism to their financiers in the West.
They do not care about the suffering of our people as long as their pay keeps trickling in,” he said.

Mr Abayeho spoke even as it emerged that peace negotiations that were set to resume on January 6 in Kampala failed to take off after Burundian foreign affairs minister Alain Aimé Nyamitwe challenged the admissibility of some of the opposition members and civil society in the dialogue.

“The secretariat has continued to issue unilateral declarations on an array of issues some that are yet to be agreed upon. There are basic ground rules we must agree on before talks can begin,” Mr Abayeho said.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda is leading the talks.

“Africans must stop being clowns. These extrajudicial killings must stop. I will send a team privately as a mediator to investigate the alleged extrajudicial killings [in Burundi],” Mr Museveni declared in Entebbe last month.

FAILED COUP

Army generals unhappy with Mr Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term attempted to topple him last May while he was on an official visit to the neighbouring Tanzania plunging the country into chaos that have seen more than 400 people killed.

Cibitoke, Musaga, Nyakabiga and Mutakura parts of the capital Bujumbura largely occupied by the minority Tutsi are some of the regions that have borne the brunt of the skirmishes.

The government of Burundi has also announced the setting up of a separate national dialogue committee to try and reach a truce as violence assumes ethnic angle.

On the controversial term limit, President Nkurunziza’s aide said the head of state had broken no law since to them, he is now serving his second term and not third as many people have been made to believe.

“We have not changed our supreme law on presidential term limits, neither have we violated it. What our detractors do not want to acknowledge is the fact that in 2005 the president was picked by parliament to lead a transitional government for a period of five years, the first election based on universal suffrage was in 2010 and as such, he finished his first term last year,” he said adding his boss had committed to retire at the end of his ‘second term’ according to the Constitution.

LOWEST TIES

Like Burundi, Rwanda is experiencing some of its lowest ties with the west after President Paul Kagame engineered a referendum on the Constitution allowing to run for re-election next year.

He is expected to easily win given the firm grip he has on most of the country’s institutions.

President Nkurunziza has protested at a decision by the African Union to deploy 5000 peacekeepers in Bujumbura warning they would be treated as an invading force and as such repelled by the National Defence Force.

“You can only deploy such troops where systems have failed but the government of Burundi is fully functional and we invite people who rely on propaganda by the western media to visit and see for themselves what we are talking about,” the spokesman said.

Article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act provides for sending of troops to a member country under circumstances of war crime, genocide or crimes against humanity without that country’s permission.
Should this come to pass, it would be the first time the East African Standby Force would be sending troops to a member country.
The UN has also warned that the country could be on the “cusp of civil war” unless the international community intervened.
Burundians have witnessed many armed conflicts. Before the current one, there was no peace there between 1993 and 2005.

The civil war was triggered by the long standing ethnic divisions between the Hutus and the Tutsis following the first multi-party elections in 1993.

The estimated death toll in all the conflicts stands at 300,000.