Coalition Splits in Burundi; Violence Feared

The main Tutsi party quit the coalition government here Saturday, pushing this Central African state one step closer to the abyss of a Rwanda-style blood bath.

State radio quoted Charles Mukasi, president of the Union for National Progress (Uprona), as saying the withdrawal from the government and National Assembly coalition set up Sept. 10 was immediately in force.

The radio, monitored by the British Broadcasting Corp. in Nairobi, Kenya, quoted Mukasi as urging his supporters to “avoid chaos”--but Uprona’s move could increase tensions after a week in which 30 people were killed in clashes in the capital between the minority Tutsi and majority Hutu ethnic groups.

Late Friday, President Sylvestre Ntibantuganya, a Hutu, and his Burundi Front for Democracy (Frodebu) party urged Uprona to come to the negotiating table to discuss the political crisis.

The U.N. Security Council, France and Belgium have also urged Burundi’s political leaders to avoid plunging the country into the kind of tribal chaos that killed hundreds of thousands in neighboring Rwanda earlier this year.

The latest crisis began when Jean Minani, a Hutu disliked by Uprona, was elected parliamentary Speaker on Dec. 1.

Violence, meanwhile, continued in parts of the capital, Bujumbura, despite a dusk-to-dawn curfew in force since Thursday.

Burundi first spiraled into chaos in October, 1993, when renegade Tutsi soldiers murdered popularly elected President Melchior Ndadaye of Frodebu, the country’s first Hutu president.

The coup failed, but tens of thousands of Hutus and Tutsis died in retaliatory killings.