President Warns Against Any Coup

In a remarkable admission of vulnerability, President Pierre Buyoya warned opponents not to attempt a coup ahead of talks aimed at ending Burundi’s civil war. Buyoya, a Tutsi, apparently directed his warning at radical Tutsi opposition parties behind recent anti-government protests. He is scheduled to meet this weekend in South Africa with Nelson Mandela, the former South African president and a mediator in talks aimed at settling the seven-year civil war with Hutu rebels. On Monday, 6,000 university students, most of them Tutsis, boycotted classes over the government’s failure to end the violence.