How Abdalla sided with Hutus over Tutsis+indirect involement in the Ruwanda genocide

[Fiqikhayre]

Ahmedou Walad Abdalla, who was the UN's special representative to Burundi during the years of 1993-1995, where he was accused by Tutsis in siding with the majority Hutus in his Mission and his subsequent empty-handed return to the UN plus his indirect involvement in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.

 

Indeed this man is very good in biased favourtism and partiality of siding with one group against another so he can enrich himself on the money intended for humanitarian purposes for the displaced and in trauma suffering populace.

 

It is funny how he always goes for the most gullible of groups, because in chaos he can go undetected and his stealing of funds won't be brought to the surface.

 

Ahmedou Walad Abdalla is the shameless thief of our country who styles himself as a king-maker.

 

Now he wants to bring to the prime-ministerial post one of his long standing colleagues who he worked with so that he can enrich himself again and again on the resources intended for the displaced and orphaned Somali children, women and elderly.

 

Indeed Ahemdou does not know any shame. He is the man who derailed the TFG together with Nuur Adde and the Aden Madoobe.

 

Now he leads the blind and uneducated Sharif Ahmed, Sharif Sakiin and co. as their guide and only light but they don't know that Ahmedou Walad Abdalla's time will end in shame as it did in Burundi but this time for good as his immoral and inappropriate conduct comes to surface everyday bit by bit.

[Fiqikhayre]

Zooming in Ahmedou Ould Abdallah in Burundi Mission (1993-1995).

 

 

Mostly Hutu civilians walk across the bridge marking the border between Burundi and Zaire March 27, 1995, as they flee Bujumbura after an episode of ethnic violence. There is a heavy military presence in the streets of the capital and thousands have fled their homes towards neighboring Zaire

 

Introduction

Biyokulule Online

May 21, 2010

 

In his memoir, Burundi on the Brink, 1993-95, diplomat Ahmedou Ould Abdallah has boosted his mission`s success in the political situation in Burundi during the two years surrounding the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda. However, as a special U.N. representative with a mandate to mediate in Burundi`s simmering civil war, Ould-Abdallah inserted himself as someone who is pushing unpopular, imaginative agenda. He was accused of lack of impartiality, and indeed was taking sides in Burundi`s ethnic conflict. The country`s fratricidal brew of bloodshed, suspicion, fear, and rumor skyrocketed during his tenure, achieving insignificant successes in crisis control and longer-term peacemaking.

 

In fact, during his term, the International Community realized that “the cost of failure in Burundi - where more than 100,000 people have already died in 18 months of turmoil - will be hundreds of millions of pounds in aid”. Here, Biyokulule Online puts forward to its readers the tragic news of Burundi`s crisis, under the care of diplomat Ahmedou Ould Abdallah`s “preventive diplomacy” techniques.

[Fiqikhayre]

New U.N. envoy appointed for Burundi

November 19, 1993.

 

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 18 (Reuter) - Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, a U.N. development official, on Thursday was appointed the new U.N. special representative for Burundi.

 

A U.N. spokesman said Maxime Leopold Zollner de Medeiros of Benin, named to the same post earlier this month, bowed out because of health reasons.

 

Ould Abdallah, a former Mauritanian foreign minister, is the special U.N. coordinator for Africa and the Least Developed Countries.

 

The Security Council late on Tuesday approved a small mediation team for Burundi and called for voluntary contributions for a possible peacekeeping mission from the Organisation of African Unity.

 

But the council steered away from any U.N. operation in the central African nation, where about 700,000 refugees fled into neighbouring states after a bloody coup attempt last month.

 

The United States drew the line at Burundi because of strained resources, diplomats said.

 

Burundi`s army launched a coup on October 21 that sparked tribal massacres between the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi tribe, which dominates the military. The country`s first Hutu president was killed during the uprising.

 

© 1993 Reuters Limited

[Fiqikhayre]

UN ACTS TO LIMIT BURUNDI FLARE-UP OF TRIBAL KILLINGS.

 

By Sam Kiley, Africa Correspondent

 

The Times

 

February 02, 1994

 

The United Nations yesterday launched a diplomatic effort to stop fighting between members of the Hutu and Tutsi tribes from spreading throughout Burundi after 30 people were killed yesterday in the capital, Bujumbura.

 

Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, UN special envoy to Burundi, said that Bujumbura was being “held hostage by a minority of Tutsi (many of them former soldiers) who do not want to see a peaceful settlement reached between the government and the opposition”.

 

Yesterday afternoon Mr Abdallah sent to Burundi in October to mediate between the two ethnic groups after six weeks of killing called an emergency meeting of political leaders to prevent a return to widespread ethnic strife.

 

“In any other country what is happening here would be called terrorism. The whole country is being blackmailed by a small group who fear prosecution for their role in the murder of the President,” Mr Abdallah said.

 

Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, was elected President last June. He was murdered by Tutsi army officers in a failed coup in October. Hutu vigilantes immediately began murdering Tutsis, while the army and Tutsi militia responded in kind against Hutus. The result was a death toll of between 100,000 and 150,000, and the flight of 300,000 refugees to Zaire, Tanzania and Rwanda.

 

The International Committee of the Red Cross reported that 30 people had been killed and another 40 wounded in clashes yesterday. Twenty were killed and 20 wounded on Sunday when two buses from the south of the country were attacked by mobs as they arrived in the capital. Bujumbura`s streets were empty yesterday and businesses closed. Rival groups were fighting in Kamenge, Musaga and Jape districts. “Grenades and rifles are being used in the fighting. Grenades are a new development and most worrying,” said Patrick Fuller, spokesman for the Red Cross.

 

Mr Abdallah said that barricades had been set up in the city.”If you drive up to a crossroads and don`t turn away, they smash your car.”

 

The Hutu-dominated parliament recently elected Cyprien Ntaryamira, the former Agriculture Minister, as President after a deal negotiated between the nine main political groups by the UN. But the Tutsi-controlled Supreme Court refused to ratify his appointment. The subsequent dismissal of the court last week touched off a resurgence of ethnic violence among rival youths.

 

High death tolls from dysentery and measles in the refugee camps of Zaire, Rwanda and Tanzania have forced many Barundi to return to their homeland. But yesterday Shelly Pitterman, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said he feared that a new wave of people would start fleeing the country again.

 

“This is very, very discouraging,” he went on. “The fighting in Bujumbura will seriously disrupt our relief efforts. Starving people will have to wait for food in the camps, if they get it at all.”

 

In Addis Ababa, Salim Salim, Secretary-General of the Organisation of African Unity, who visited Burundi last week, told a meeting of Foreign Ministers that the country remains “tense, fragile and potentially explosive”. OAU efforts to reconcile military and civilian officials in the wake of the coup attempt have led to “many misunderstandings, some real, some whipped up for political expediency”.

 

Mr Salim reported that the latest round of ethnic fighting had decreased but not ended in Burundi. He said that plans by the OAU to send a 100-member military team to protect civilian leaders, including President Ntaryamira, have been delayed by opposition from some of the military and politicians. Opponents of the plan argued that the presence of foreign troops would violate the country`s sovereignty.

 

Mr Salim said other African countries that were suffering or faced with internal strife were Somalia, Congo, Angola, Liberia, Rwanda, Sudan, Togo and Zaire. Thousands of people have been killed in these countries and millions more displaced or forced to flee their homelands in recent years due to fighting that was caused by ethnic-based political conflicts.

 

© Copyright Times Newspapers Ltd, 1994

[Fiqikhayre]

DEMONSTRATORS ACCUSE UN ENVOY OF BIAS, PROTEST AGAINST PLANS FOR NAIROBI TALKS

 

BBC Monitoring Service: Africa

 

June 01, 1994

 

Bujumbura, 30th May: Burundi`s Union for National Progress, Uprona, former single party, and the Party for the Reconciliation of the People, PRP, on Sunday [29th May] in Bujumbura gathered a crowd of supporters to express their disapproval of the “biased” way the UN representative is carrying out his duties. Shouting “Abdallah out” and “Burundi is sovereign and mature enough to dispense easily with your tutelage,” the two main parties of the opposition expressed their dissatisfaction in front of the hotel where the UN representative, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, lives. As the OAU special representative, Senegalese Papa Louis, who was forced to resign last March, Abdallah, a Mauritanian national, was also accused by the demonstrators of going beyond his duties of mere observer and facilitation in the restoration of state institutions.

 

The accusations of partiality are not new, but the last straw was, according to the protesters, Abdallah`s plan to organize in Nairobi from 1st June a week-long international conference on democracy and security in Burundi. The meeting, to which all the members of Burundi` s executive, legislative and judiciary have been invited, has stirred fears for their safety. They said plans to “gather at the same time all the members of the Burundian cabinet in the same plane” were suspicious.

 

The UN representative came down to the hall of his hotel and asked to talk to the angry demonstrators. He said the demonstrators had a democratic right to demonstrate for action they deem right, but that it was also not right for them to accuse him without foundation. He said the Nairobi conference would be convened only if Burundi`s main parties deemed it useful and wanted to attend. “I am not here to force anybody to act against his own will,” he said.

 

Observers said that the same opposition through similar demonstrations forced the OAU secretary-general`s special representative to Rwanda to resign.

 

© PANA news agency, Dakar, in English 1622 gmt 30 May 94

 

© 1994 The British Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

[Fiqikhayre]

Clashes resume in Burundi capital, residents leave

By Deogratias Muvira.

 

September 14, 1994

 

BUJUMBURA, Sept 14 (Reuter) - Clashes between troops and gunmen in the Burundi capital resumed for a second straight day on Wednesday and residents started leaving under military supervision.

 

Witnesses said shooting with automatic weapons in the northern suburb of Kamenge, which broke out on Monday night and continued until midnight (2200 GMT) on Tuesday, resumed at dawn on Wednesday.

 

Troop reinforcements were seen moving towards Kamenge and armoured vehicles ringed the suburb, a hotbed of Hutu extremists opposed to the army dominated by Burundi`s Tutsi minority.

 

The witnesses said civilian residents were leaving Kamenge under army supervision but there were no new casualty reports available. They said a number of houses had been set ablaze.

 

Officials said two soldiers were killed and four wounded on Tuesday in clashes in Kamenge and the nearby suburb of Kinama.

 

Burundi has the same ethnic makeup as neighbouring Rwanda, where an estimated one million people, mostly minority Tutsis, died in tribal massacres since April blamed largely on Hutus.

 

The Rwanda bloodbath was ignited by a rocket attack which killed the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, both Hutus, as the plane carrying them flew into the Rwandan capital on April 6.

 

Ethnic tensions in Burundi have been stoked by the arrival of 200,000 Rwandan refugees -- both Hutus and Tutsis -- fleeing the massacres or civil war.

 

Large numbers of the residents of Kinama and Kamenge were driven out after mass killings following the assassination last October of Melchior Ndadaye, the Hutu president who was elected in the first free polls after decades of Tutsi army rule.

 

Officials said armed groups that had left the districts had been able to reform and identified the gunmen in Kamenge as members of the self-declared Popular Democratic Hutu Army.

 

They said the Hutu extremist group was led by exiled former interior and public security minister Leonard Nyangoma.

 

Violence broke out despite the signing on Saturday of an accord between most of Burundi`s political parties covering power sharing arrangements once a new president is chosen for a four-year transition period.

 

The U.N. special envoy to Burundi, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, said on Tuesday the clashes in the capital should not be blown out of proportion or distract from what political progress had been achieved.

 

He told Radio France Internationale that the aim of the army moving to the suburbs was to prevent the situation worsening.

 

Burundi has been in turmoil since Ndadaye was murdered by renegade Tutsi soldiers in a failed coup last October.

 

His successor Cyprien Ntaryamira, also a Hutu, was assassinated in the plane crash with Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6.

 

A grenade attack on Bujumbura market on Friday killed three people and wounded more than 70, and at least 70 people died in an attack on a church and market in northeast Muyinga province on September 4. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks.

 

Attacks were continuing in the north and aid workers said that farmers` fields around Muyinga were being torched.

 

© 1994 Reuters Limited

[Fiqikhayre]

Burundi paper threatens U.N. and U.S. envoys

By Nicholas Kotch.

 

February 09, 1995

 

NAIROBI, Feb 9 (Reuter) - The special United Nations envoy to Burundi said on Thursday he was taking seriously a local newspaper`s threats against him and the U.S. ambassador.

 

Ahmedou Ould Abdallah said the newspaper, La Nation, was owned by Burundi`s former military president, Jean-Baptiste Bagaza.

 

“Two diplomats to combat or to kill?” asked La Nation`s front-page article in this week`s issue.

 

“I am taking this very seriously but I am not intimidated and I am not impressed,” Abdallah, who is at the centre of international efforts to avert ethnic war between Burundi`s Hutus and Tutsis, told Reuters.

 

“Bagaza owns this newspaper,” he said in a telephone interview with Reuters in Nairobi.

 

La Nation made what were tantamount to death threats against Abdallah and U.S. ambassador Robert Krueger.

 

“Those who write such articles by their own admission are enemies of democracy,” Krueger, who took up his posting in June last year, told Reuters.

 

La Nation accused the two envoys of siding with the majority Frodebu (Burundi Front for Democracy) party which draws most of its support from the country`s Hutus.

 

“Sometimes diplomatic immunity has no meaning, particularly in time of war. Well, we are at war...” La Nation said.

 

© 1995 Reuters Limited

[Fiqikhayre]

BURUNDI`S DEMOGRAPHIC TIME BOMB TICKS EVER LOUDER.

 

By Chris McGreal in Bujumbura

 

The Guardian

 

March 21, 1995

 

YOU will hear it many times in Burundi: the tiny central African country is not neighbouring Rwanda, their fates are not inextricably bound, whatever their similarities.

 

Yet enough of the world fears that Burundi will follow its neighbour`s plunge into the abyss to make a greater effort to prevent it than anyone was prepared to do in Rwanda a year ago.

 

Perhaps it is guilt at the abandonment of Rwanda`s Tutsis to their holocaust. Or perhaps it is the realisation that the cost of failure in Burundi - where more than 100,000 people have already died in 18 months of turmoil - will be hundreds of millions of pounds in aid.

 

Whatever the motive, it has pushed Burundi on to the United Nations Security Council agenda and brought a scrutiny tragically lacking before the Rwandan genocide.

 

Washington`s controversial ambassador, Robert Krueger, tramps across Burundi exposing massacres, in defiance of death threats. UN missions undiplomatically name names, accusing the main Tutsi opposition party of destabilising the coalition government of which it is a part. And the UN special representative, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, makes himself unpopular with extremists by pushing an imaginative agenda for a long-term settlement.

 

The distinctions between Rwanda and Burundi are important. While Hutus outnumber Tutsis by six to one in both countries, Rwanda`s Tutsis were underdogs and unable to protect themselves.

 

In Burundi there is a balance of terror: Hutus have the numbers, but Tutsis control the army and wield considerable political power.

 

Mr Abdallah says his role is not to persuade the minority to surrender the power it sees as protection.

 

“These people have ruled the country for 30 years,” he said. “To ask them to step aside is unrealistic and irresponsible and I will not accept it, despite criticism.”

 

Instead, he says, the UN aims to help replace the balance of terror with a system in which both peoples have confidence. But it has met with only limited success in pressing for reform of the army, which the Tutsis see as their guarantee of security but the Hutu regard as the principal obstacle to change.

 

Tutsi hardliners in the coalition have rejected offers to help build an independent judiciary capable of ending the impunity with which Tutsi soldiers and extremists persecute Hutus.

 

Mr Abdallah is pushing for sanctions - including an international travel ban and freezing of overseas bank accounts - against individuals who refuse to co-operate with reform or threaten the coalition.

 

Mr Krueger has another tactic: attempting to embarrass the military into reform.

 

In January he outraged hardline Tutsis by visiting a massacre site and announcing that at least 70 Hutus, mostly women and children, had been murdered by men in army uniforms.

 

Prominent Tutsi politicians denounced Mr Krueger for siding with Hutus. La Nation, the newspaper of the former dictator Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, called for the American ambassador to be “shot down”.

 

“From time to time diplomatic immunity is useless, particularly at a time of war - and we are at war,” the paper said.

 

Although the Security Council has taken Burundi`s misery on board, Mr Abdallah is looking for a long-term commitment unlikely to find favour with the big powers. It includes an indefinite deployment of UN troops so that Burundi can dismantle the army.

 

“The West has to have the political will to send troops for 30 years, and then you can create a Costa Rica,” - the peaceful Central American state without an army.

 

Equally controversial is the issue Mr Abdallah argues lies at the heart of the problem.

 

“There is a time bomb. The country is suffocated by demographics. There are 260 people per square kilometre. The population doubles every 15 years and there are no big cities to absorb people. The second largest city is a refugee camp. We have to be imaginative about this.”

 

*Rene Degni Segui, the UN special investigator for Rwanda, said yesterday that police were investigating information that his name featured on a “death list” compiled by hardline Hutus in Ivory Coast.

[Fiqikhayre]

Burundi students protest against U.N. envoy.

 

March 23, 1995

 

BUJUMBURA, March 23 (Reuter) - Thousands of placard-waving students marched through Burundi`s capital Bujumbura on Thursday protesting that a United Nations special envoy was taking sides in its ethnic conflict.

 

Nearly 3,000 mainly Tutsi students accused Ahmedou Ould Abdallah of backing Hutu extremists and of downplaying a weekend incident in which a number of people including three Belgians were killed in cold blood by guerrillas.

 

The students also criticised President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya for remaining silent on the attack which sparked fresh ethnic fighting in the country between minority Tutsis and the majority Hutu people.

 

“U.N. yes, Abdallah no. Abdallah go home,” read one placard.

 

“Abdallah is with the armed Hutu gangs. Time for colonisation is gone,” read another.

 

The chanting students marched from the city`s university campus to the president`s office and onto the Belgian embassy before dispersing outside the U.N. envoy`s residence.

 

Tension in the central African country is high and mounting between Hutus and Tutsis, the two ethnic groups involved in strife that has all but torn neighbouring Rwanda apart.

 

Security forces watched from a distance and did not intervene throughout the peaceful march. The U.N. envoy could not be reached for comment.

 

Victims of the weekend attack were gunned down during an ambush outside the city on Sunday. Etienne Waltzing, Corinne Salle and her daughter Jazmin were killed when their car came under fire 12 km (seven miles) southeast of Bujumbura.

 

They were all Burundi-born members of the tight-knit community from the central African nation`s former colonial power and were the first foreigners to be deliberately slain in Burundi`s bloodshed which erupted 18 months ago …

 

© 1995 Reuters Limited

[Fiqikhayre]

UN SPECIAL ENVOY ABDALLAH INTERVIEWED ON STUDENT UNREST IN BUJUMBURA.

 

BBC Monitoring Service: Africa

 

March 25, 1995

 

The situation is becoming worse. The army has been dishing it out to Hutu armed groups in Kanyosha, a southern suburb of the capital Bujumbura, where students took to the streets this morning [23rd March] to protest against the actions and presence of the UN representative in Burundi, Mauritanian Ahmedou Ould Abdallah. In a communique, the students also demanded the departure of the head of state and the dissolution of parliament. Celcius Senguignouva reports:

 

[senguignouva - recording] The students at the University of Burundi - the only university in the country - decided to organize a protest march against the UN secretary-general`s special representative in Burundi, Mauritanian Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, at a meeting yesterday. There had been grumbling for some days by Tutsis against Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, who was accused of supporting President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya and the Front for Democracy in Burundi [Frodebu], the majority party. Mr Abdallah is painted within the Tutsi community as favouring the Hutus in this political and ethnic conflict, which has been going on for the past 18 months. The students demonstrated with placards bearing slogans that rejected the action of the UN secretary - general`s special representative and demanded his immediate recall. In their demonstration, the students criticized the head of state, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya. On the placards displayed by the students one could read: Ntibantunganya must choose between the national army and the Intagohekas. The Intagohekas are Hutu ministers who claim to be former Interior Minister Leonard Nyangoma`s supporters.

 

This student demonstration epitomizes the extent to which the political and security situation has worsened in Bujumbura and the country. Student demonstrations in Bujumbura have always been the harbingers of serious crises in the country. They held demonstrations soon after the Frodebu victory in the elections to denounce the ethnic tone of the elections.

 

Concerning security, the Burundian security forces have been clamping down on Hutu armed groups since yesterday evening in Kanyosha, a southern suburb in the capital. Gunshots could be heard until 1100 [local time]. A bus and its passengers were reported missing in the Hutu suburb of Kamenge. The police think the bus was seized, and that some of its passengers are being held hostage. [End of recording]

 

This student demonstration comes two days after violence which led to about 20 deaths in Bujumbura between 19th and 22nd March, a situation which prompted fears of a repeat of the Rwandan crisis. The risks are still great and anything is possible, UN special representative Abdallah told us this morning:

 

[Abdallah - recording] Anything is possible, I am not ruling out anything, but I must tell you that the situation is being controlled by the government and the security forces. People are dying, which is deplorable, but you must know that for the past 18 months - [pauses] Since 6th April, it has been said that Burundi is going to collapse. This has been said for a year now. So, what conclusion do you want me to draw? For the past year, the media, non-governmental organizations, governments, everybody - [pauses] it is possible, and although the situation is very difficult, this is also one more reason why we must see what we can do about it.

 

[Announcer] Each time you speak, Mr Abdallah, one gets a feeling of optimism. On what do you base your optimism about the country`s situation -

 

[Abdallah - interrupting] It is not optimism, it is realism. I am not optimistic, I am realistic. I am telling you that the situation is very difficult, but that the people are now under control and that this situation has been going on for a year now. The fundamental problem is the same: distrust. The crisis was very deep and, added to that, there was fear and a lack of trust. There are a whole lot of problems.

 

[Announcer] Is it this distrust that is making students demonstrate today in Bujumbura?

 

[Abdallah] I do not think the demonstration is related to distrust. Their demands are very explicit and do not require any comment. They are demanding the departure of the head of state and the dissolution of the parliament, but these are demands being made by young students, who are certainly expressing some existing fears.

 

Source: Africa No 1 radio, Libreville, in French 1215 gmt 23 Mar 95

 

Text of report by Gabonese Africa No 1 radio

 

© BBC Monitoring Summary of World Broadcasts.

[Fiqikhayre]

PRIME MINISTER CALLS ON STUDENTS TO GIVE HIM MORE TIME.

 

BBC Monitoring Service: Africa

 

March 28, 1995

 

Excerpts from report by Burundi radio

 

Mr Antoine Nduwayo, the prime minister, yesterday [26th March] afternoon met the university students and staff at the Kiriri campus [in Bujumbura]. The meeting followed four days interrupted lectures. You will recall that the latter organized a demonstration march last week to protest against the lack of impartiality on the part of Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, the UN representative in Burundi. University students and staff are demanding his departure.

 

In addition, university students and staff are asking for the restoration of peace and security so that they can resume lectures. The prime minister agreed with them, for, he said, one can neither work nor build anything durable without security.

 

On disarmament, he said the operation was continuing, adding, however, that if the problem of displaced people was not resolved there would be no peace either. The prime minister spoke at length about disarmament and took the opportunity to deliver a message to the students.

 

[Nduwayo - recording] [Words indistinct] this frantic armament which has developed in our country and which today constitutes the number one security factor, did not happen by (?mere chance)... When, at the beginning of the crisis, we noticed that young Hutus were beginning to arm themselves - some young Hutus, because the majority of the [words indistinct] are not armed [words indistinct], as is the case among the Tutsis [sentence as heard]. All the same, there were some youths who armed themselves [words indistinct]. As a reaction, we saw some Tutsi youths arming themselves. Well, the result is what we are going through...

 

We have announced that we are going to disarm people. It is easy to say it. One has got to implement and achieve it. Today there is political will, but we must tell you that it is a complex and (?difficult) problem. I am surprised to hear that as long as the (?new) government is not yet (word indistinct) you will not resume lectures.... We can disarm by force and we in fact do it from time to time...

 

So, we are going to continue the disarmament. Work is in progress and other strategies are being prepared. I have felt that you are being extremely harsh with us... This government was formed on 1st March. Today it is the 26th. Do you think we can put in place coherent political strategies, not only for disarmament but also for reconstruction, put in place a coherent policy for mending the national fabric, and achieve all this in 26 days. When do you want us to do this? When the government is continually forced to go and put out fires here in Bujumbura, when all the time attacks are taking place in every direction, and when, to all this, you add demonstrations by those who should understand that the government needs time to prepare all the strategies and start working: Well you want one thing and its opposite at the same time...

 

So I ask you to be both harsh and to shake us up when you see us sleeping. But also, give us time to work. And give yourselves time to (?learn). So, I would like to ask you - or rather tell you - that this is a government that has just been put in place. (?Give) the government some breathing space at least, so that we can show you what we can achieve. Since I assumed the post of prime minister [passage indistinct], there have been strikes [words indistinct] this cannot work. If you add to this your demands and demonstrations [words indistinct]... I fully understand your message through your communication at the beginning [words indistinct] in which you called for more security. Everyone is demanding the same thing.

 

Maybe you have the right to demonstrate, but the peasant who is suffering in the interior of the country and the (?displaced people) are asking for (?even more). Think about them.

 

Concerning the displaced, there is a policy that is being [word indistinct] and I can assure you that I have committed myself to providing every family with a plot of land where they can (?farm) by the time the first rains come in September and October. This is a schedule we cannot deviate from. I will personally ensure that the displaced and repatriated speedily return to either their properties, or, if it is not possible, we will find somewhere else for them.

 

Source: Radio Burundi, Bujumbura, in French 0430 gmt 27 Mar 95

 

© 1995 The British Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

[Fiqikhayre]

UN envoy leaves Burundi after two years of “preventive diplomacy”.

 

Annie Thomas

 

October 11, 1995

 

NAIROBI, Oct 11 (AFP) - UN special representative Ahmedou Ould Abdallah quit Burundi on Wednesday after two years of tortuous “preventive diplomacy” in a country seething on the edge of civil war.

 

“I am leaving at the end of a busy mandate,” Ould Abdallah told AFP in Nairobi by telephone.

 

“I myself asked to leave, in the Arab style ... quietly,” said the Mauritanian diplomat, a former minister in his home country.

 

Ould Abdallah, who arrived in November 1993, is returning to UN headquarters in New York.

 

No successor has yet been named, but the interim will be assured by his deputy, Abdelaziz Hany, an Egyptian.

 

Ould Abdallah, a Moslem who will be 55 next month, won a reputation in the largely Christian central African mini-state for reacting coolly to successive crises.

 

Rumours abound on the reasons behind his departure, but he rejected them all, stressing that it had “nothing to do with the Burundians,” who turned on a “very big reception” to mark his leaving.

 

Announcements that he was about to leave were made several times during his term, which was initially for several months, but as crisis followed crisis he stayed on.

 

He developed his own brand of “preventive diplomacy” at the head of a dozen international experts and another dozen Burundians, but with no UN troops to back his policies.

 

He is given much of the credit for the prevention so far of all-out civil war between Hutus and Tutsis, but clashes and massacres are common.

 

“I arrived at the conclusion that preventive diplomacy could not come from one man, but had to be a joint effort between the government, the United Nations, non-governmental organisations and the press,” he said.

 

He has one regret about leaving: “I shall miss the formal opening of the national debate (on reconciliation), planned for the end of the year. I would have liked to launch it.”

 

Ould Abdallah says there exist two major misconceptions about Burundi: that it is a time-bomb waiting to explode into civil war on a scale similar to that in neighbouring Rwanda last year -- “that has destabilised the country” -- and that its problems are confined within its borders, “whereas the problem is regional.”

 

“There are three million refugees and displaced persons, Rwandans and Burundians, within a circle which has a diameter of 300 kilometres (180 miles),” he said, voicing his support for a regional conference on refugees.

 

Ould Abadallah arrived in Bujumbura after a failed coup d`etat on October 21, 1993 during which soldiers assassinated the country`s first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, who had been elected five months previously.

 

His death triggered massacres which left more than 50,000 people dead.

 

Ould Abdallah`s mission was to oversee the establishment of new institutions and a new president.

 

That was done in three months.

 

But on April 6, 1994, with the UN envoy on the point of leaving, the new president, Cyprien Ntaryamira, another Hutu, was killed along with Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana when their plane was shot down over Kigali.

 

That triggered the war in Rwanda in which Hutu extremists slaughtered more than half-a-million men, women and children, but mass killing was avoided in Burundi, which had the same ethnic mix -- 85 percent Hutu to 14 percent Tutsi.

 

But the killing destabilised the country, and a new president was needed.

 

That took until September of 1994, when a power-sharing “government convention” was signed and interim president Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, a Hutu, was confirmed in the post by a 68-1 vote in parliament.

 

“After that, there was a need to consolidate the regime,” said Ould Abdallah.

 

But, as he leaves, the moderates are under threat, with much of the tiny country controlled by Hutu and Tutsi militias and violent death commonplace.

[Fiqikhayre]

Self-styled king-maker Ahmedou Walad Abdalla failed miserably in the Mission to Burundi where he was accused of partiality and one-sidedness by the students of the only University in Burundi who hold up placards denoting "No to Abdalla, Go home Abdalla, Abdalla out and Burundi is sovereign and mature enough to dispense easily with your tutelage,”

 

Indeed the man who failed in the Burundi Mission now failed in Somalia as well after also being found out to be biased and partial in his dealings, "No to Abdalla, Out with biased Abdalla, indeed".

 

[Che -Guevara]

Blame Somalia's problems on Somalis-pointless scapegoating this fella. Even if he's replaced, another will be appointed and you will be leveling the same accusations cuz he doesn't share your view of how Somali problem should be mitigated or perhaps fixed.

[Jacaylbaro]

Cajiib how we can't see such recent history ,,,,, Somalia is the place where all the losers get the highest positions.