World

Hutus, Tutsis Sign Peace Deal

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

August 25, 2000 / 10:32 AM EDT / CBS

Nelson Mandela brokered a last-minute peace deal for Burundi Monday and U.S. President Bill Clinton gave his seal of approval to an agreement aimed at ending the small African nation's 7-year-old civil war.

Mandela had hoped Clinton's arrival would add momentum to the peace talks and it appeared to have had some effect with the original group of 10 Tutsi parties who earlier said they wouldn't sign being whittled down to six at the end.

Mandela's team at first thought 14 delegations had signed the agreement but later realized that only 13 were backing it.

Clinton agreed to attend as a mark of respect to Mandela even though officials admit privately that he is probably associating himself with an exercise doomed to failure.

On the second stop of his three-nation tour of Africa, Mr. Clinton was in Tanzania to witness the deal, which calls for a three-year transition period during which democratic elections will be organized and Hutus will be given equal representation in the army - currently dominated by Tutsis.

Mr. Clinton sought to prop up Mandela's faltering efforts to end seven years of ethnic warfare in Burundi that has killed more than 200,000 people.

Mr. Clinton arrived at the talks to find them in apparent disarray after Burundi's president demanded last-minute changes to the power-sharing agreement. Mr. Clinton met with Mandela in hopes that they could come up with a way to salvage the situation.

Mr. Clinton also made an impassioned appeal to members of 19 delegations to the Burundi peace talks, as well as a host of regional leaders summoned to add momentum to the talks.

"I do think it is absolutely certain that if you let this moment slip away it will dig the well of bitterness deeper and pile the mountain of grievances higher," the president told the delegates.

"We see the Burundi peace process as...ongoing," said Susan Rice, assistant secretary of state for African affairs. "The best we can hope for is an outcome that takes the process a large step down the road. In any case, the United States will continue to support the efforts of President Mandela."

Tribal drummers in headdresses and flowing robes greeted Mr. Clinton and daughter Chelsea as Air Force One touched down at Kilimanjaro International Airport. Cheers erupted as Mr. Clinton, smiling and waving, emerged from the plane.

Mr. Clinton was met at the airport by Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, with whom he will hold talks on bilateral relations.

The two leaders signed an open skies agreement allowing airlines from both nations to fly over air space - an unlikely event as no U.S. carriers fly to Africa and Tanzania has only one aircraft capable of reaching as far as Europe. Tanzania's $8 billion foreign debt and a devastating drought were also on the agenda.

After a few hours in Tanzania, Mr. Clinton planned to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo to discuss the status of thIsraeli-Palestinian peace process, then head home.

Mr. Clinton closed his weekend visit to Nigeria on Sunday night with an address to business leaders, in which he announced the United States would make Nigerian exports eligible for duty-free treatment.

He called Nigeria "America's important partner," and said the entrepreneurs could begin turning around Nigeria's reputation for corruption by investing in its people and diversifying the economy.

"We have to reverse the practice that went along with the absence of democracy...but let's not get too carried away about the impact of the past on the future," the president said.

Mr. Clinton promised continued U.S. support for Nigeria's transition to democracy but did not, as President Olusegun Obasanjo had hoped, agree to cancel or cut the nearly $1 billion U.S. portion of Nigeria's $32 billion foreign debt, a move that would require congressional approval.

In broad terms, Burundi's civil war pits the Tutsi minority - which controls the government and military - against the Hutu majority.

Although making up less than 20 percent of the seven million population, Tutsis have controlled political, economic and military power in Burundi since independence in 1962.

Burundi's only attempt at democracy ended in disaster in 1993 when Melchior Ndadaye, the first elected Hutu president, was assassinated by Tutsi troops soon after taking power.

The central African nation has been at war ever since. Four people were killed in a rebel attack on the outskirts of Burundi's capital Bujumbura on Sunday night.

Amongst other things, the accord being negotiated calls for an ethnically-balanced transitional government that would pave the way for elections in three years and also create an army made up equally of Hutu and Tutsi soldiers.

Hutu groups have generally accepted the deal, but hard-line Tutsis reject it because it does not call for a cease-fire first. They say they fear Hutu extremists will begin slaughtering Tutsis in a repeat of the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda.