African Neighbors to Suspend Sanctions on Burundi

Leaders from East and Central Africa agreed Saturday to suspend sanctions that they imposed against Burundi 30 months ago in an effort to force the country’s Tutsi-led military government to talk peace with its Hutu opponents and return Burundi to constitutional rule.

The move was intended to recognize the progress made by the regime of President Pierre Buyoya toward ending a five-year civil war and allow the Central African nation to end its international isolation.

Relief workers said the suspension of sanctions--imposed in July 1996 after Buyoya took power in a military coup--will vastly benefit hundreds of thousands of average Burundians who have suffered soaring food prices, a crippling lack of fuel and shortages of seeds and tools.

However, some outside observers argued that it will take sustainable peace between the country’s warring factions, not just a suspension of sanctions, to significantly improve the lives of the mass of Burundians, who have been displaced from their homes and robbed of their ability to subsist on their own.

Meanwhile, Hutu rebels expressed concern that suspending the embargo will leave the government less inclined to make concessions in ongoing peace talks and dampen its will to embrace democratic principles.

Buyoya called the move to suspend the sanctions, which initially included a trade embargo and a ban on flights to and from Burundi, “a wise decision.”

Addressing a summit of African leaders from Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Congo and Tanzania in the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha, the Burundian head of state pledged that his government will “leave no stone unturned to ensure that we arrive at a peace agreement that is all-inclusive by the end of this year.”

A former Belgian colony, Burundi has been racked by periodic bouts of ethnic bloodshed between majority Hutus and minority Tutsis since independence in 1962.

Buyoya claimed that his coup was necessary to avert further bloodletting, which accelerated with the assassination of Burundi’s first democratically elected president, a Hutu, by Tutsi paratroopers in October 1993.

Since then, an estimated 200,000 civilians have been killed and 600,000 have been displaced from their homes because of continuous violence.

A Western diplomat said that Buyoya’s government deserves the break from sanctions because it has met all the conditions laid down by the regional leaders.

The conditions included lifting a ban on political parties, restoring the National Assembly and initiating all-party negotiations, including talks with armed rebel factions.

“This is significant. It is not cosmetic,” the diplomat said of the Burundian government’s efforts to comply.

But, he added: “That’s not to say you have equitable power-sharing. . . . The issue is to try to establish the conditions that can yield a sustainable political development.”

However, Hutu rebel groups argued that the suspension of sanctions is bad for the peace process.

“Buyoya will never publicly declare that he does not accept negotiations,” said Jerome Ndiho, a spokesman for a Brussels-based Hutu group with a military wing fighting in Burundi. “But he will cool down. He will stop the process from going sincerely ahead. We believe the sanctions must be maintained so as to keep up the political and psychological pressure.”

Ndiho said his group wants the constitution that was established by a referendum in 1992 implemented; the release of political prisoners, claimed to be as many as 10,000; and the closure of all “regroupment” camps, where Ndiho says Hutu civilians are still being interned without proper food, water or sanitary facilities. The government says the camps have been abandoned.