{Arusha — The East African Community (EAC) will next month assess security situation in Burundi.
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The decision has come at a time when the scheduled second round of mediation talks among warring parties in Burundi under retired President Benjamin Mkapa is hanging in the balance.
The mission to Burundi will comprise representatives from all EAC partner states. The Secretariat said on Friday after a meeting of the Sectoral Council of ministers responsible for EAC Affairs and Planning that the team would be required to update the regional leaders on the security situation in the EAC member country which has been rocked by violence since April last year.
In March this year, the EAC appointed Mr Mkapa as chief mediator to assist President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda in the reconcilliation efforts. The first round of dialogue was held in Arusha early in May and was to continue end of last month but that did not happen.
“The team that will be sent will strictly abide by the Terms of Reference,” said a statement from the Arusha-based Secretariat at the end of the meeting which also called for urgent resumption of the Burundi peace talks.
The ministerial meeting took place only a few days after the EAC secretary general Liberat Mfumukeko acknowledged the contribution of the development partners in the Burundi peace process, among them China. He made the remarks when he spoke to the Chinese ambassador to Tanzania, Dr Lu Youqing, when the latter presented his credentials to the EAC boss. China joins more than a dozen countries and international organisations now accredited to EAC.
The deepening security concerns in Burundi by the EAC partner states has come at a time the authorities in Bujumbura have repeatedly announced that an internal dialogue to resolve the crisis was underway.
President Pierre Nkurunziza, whose decision in April 2015 to vie for the presidency sparked the crisis, was quoted by media as pleading to his countrymen and women to support efforts already underway to mediate the warring parties.
He called on Burundians who have fled their country to return home and join hands with those inside the country to rebuild their country. Over 250,000 of them have fled to Tanzania and Rwanda.
Scores of opposition leaders are living in exile.
The Bujumbura authorities have, however, insisted that they would never sit in a negotiation table with the opposition groups, saying they were behind the violent protests that rocked the capital for much of last year until recently and those behind the attempted coup against President Nkurunziza in May last year.
The East African Legislative Assembly is another EAC organ which announced recently that it would once again send a delegation of regional MPs to the troubled country.
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