African leaders to join Burundi peace talks

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (Reuters) -- African leaders launch two days of talks in Tanzania Wednesday aimed at ending the seven-year-old civil war in Burundi.

The summit in the northern town of Arusha brings together 19 leaders of Burundi's warring factions, including for the first time representatives of armed rebel groups.

A Tanzanian spokesman said the presidents of Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Zambia would also attend, along with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Representatives from the United Nations, The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Togo, which holds the chair of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), are also expected to attend.

"We hope to resolve the outstanding issues so we can proceed with a final document for the peace agreement," Mark Bomani, a senior official in the mediating team, told Reuters.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela, acting as mediator, earlier this month said he was optimistic an agreement would be signed at this meeting.

But at the weekend he acknowledged the difficulties and said it would not be signed before August 28.

The rebels, attending the peace talks for the first time since they began in June 1998, have made clear they consider this only the beginning of the peace process and demand direct talks with the government and army.

The civil war began in 1993 when troops from the country's ethnic Tutsi minority murdered the country's democratically elected president, a Hutu.

Since then, Hutu rebels have waged an insurgency against the Tutsi-dominated army which has cost an estimated 200,000 lives and has spilled over into neighboring Rwanda, which has a similar ethnic mix.

Some of the outstanding issues on which no compromise has been reached include the composition of a peacetime army, who will lead the transition government after an agreement is signed and terms of a cease-fire.

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