Stop beating us like rats, says Burundi rebel chief
 
2005-04-27 21:27:33
By Helen Nyambura of Reuters

	Burundian rebel leader Agathon Rwasa (L) is flanked by Tanzania\'s ambassador to Burundi, Francis Mndolwa, as he addresses a news conference in DSM yesterday.Rwasa, who heads the Forces for National Liberation (FNL), said he was willing to participate in

Complaining that his people were treated like rats, Burundi's elusive rebel leader said he was ready for talks with the government yesterday in the first news conference of his 25-year guerrilla career.

Agathon Rwasa's Forces for National Liberation (FNL) is the sole rebel group to abstain from a peace process that nudged Burundi towards ending years of civil war between rebels from the Hutu majority and politically-dominant Tutsis.

Based in the hills around the capital Bujumbura, Rwasa's fighters have clashed repeatedly with army troops backed by helicopter gunships this month, underlining the obstacles to ending a conflict that has killed more than 300,000 people.

The first thing we want to do is discuss with the government how the fighting can stop, a soft-spoken Rwasa told a news conference in Dar es Salaam.

We want our rights. We don’t want to be non-citizens in our own country. We are treated like rats in someone's house.

Whenever the owner of the house sees them, he hits them on the head, said Rwasa, clad in a black suit and looking relaxed.

Rwasa's FNL has long accused Tutsis of discriminating against Hutus, calling for a reconciliation process in which both groups acknowledge their mistakes during the decades of bloodshed since independence from Belgium in 1962.

We want talks with real changes. Every citizen should feel free in his or her country that is what we are asking for. We should not have some citizens superior to others. Our goal is equality for all, said Rwasa, who analysts believe commands about 3,000 fighters.

Rwasa held talks with President Benjamin Mkapa on Monday, a meeting U.N. officials said showed the FNL was serious about joining the tiny central African country’s peace process.

The FNL has made offers of talks in the past, but they have foundered over disagreements over who should mediate.

Observers say Rwasa's unprecedented personal appearance at a news conference shows that the movement he founded as a secretive paramilitary organisation in 1980, that at first mainly carried out propaganda before turning to killings, may at last be committed to negotiations.

Rwasa said he would not take part in elections scheduled for later this year under a peace deal signed by other factions and denied newspaper reports that his group had called a ceasefire.

We did not sign any ceasefire as it was reported in some Burundi newspapers, Rwasa said.

Regional leaders on Friday extended Burundi’s interim government’s mandate to Aug. 26, when a new president is to be sworn in under power-sharing arrangements designed to defuse decades of ethnic strife.

We want elections to go on and our talks to go on,” he said.

Regional leaders branded the FNL a terrorist group after it claimed responsibility for an August massacre of 160 Congolese Tutsi refugees in Gatumba, Burundi, but Rwasa said his men were only returning fire from soldiers in the camp.

There were bomb explosions in the camp. What were bombs doing in a refugee camp? We believe this was an army base and unfortunately, some refugees were in it, he said.
Rwasa, a Hutu, said he was ready to face a tribunal if his Tutsi rivals would face a similar court.

Once both parties have agreed that evil has happened in our country, then a neutral person from the international community should come to our country and judge who has done more evil.

• SOURCE: Guardian