Violence simmers anew in Burundi

U.S. security adviser in talks to end ethnic fighting

May 16, 1996
Web posted at: 7:20 a.m. EDT (1120 GMT)

BUJUMBURA, Burundi (CNN) -- The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday called on the United Nations and member states to plan urgently for a standby force in Burundi in case violence erupts there again.

Amid the international community's concerns of Burundi's instability, U.S. National Security Adviser Anthony Lake visited Burundi Tuesday to have talks on what can be done to end the country's ethnic wars.

Ethnic hatred between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority has repeatedly triggered violence in Burundi since it gained independence from Belgium in 1962.

Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the small Central African country with a population of only 6 million.

Most recently, as many as 100,000 people died in just two months in late 1993. And it is estimated another 100,000 have died since then in Burundi, where ethnic killings average 500 a month.

The wounds have now been reopened in a country U.S. officials describe as being on the brink -- or maybe over it.

'People can do inhuman things'

In the capital, Bujumbura, eight people died a week before in a center for displaced persons. And several more were wounded in attacks believed to have been carried out by elements of the mainly Tutsi Burundian army.

Half a mile away from the center, Lake crossed to the other side of Burundi's bitter equation -- a hospital attacked in early May, probably by Hutu rebels. Four Tutsis were killed, including a 6-month-old baby.

"People can do inhuman things. We just have to do what we can to head it off," Lake said. "That means you don't just react emotionally, you think about it, you try to have a strategy."

Having a strategy would mean trying to get radical factions to the table and encouraging moderates.

Lake met with Burundi Prime Minister Antoine Nduwayo, a Tutsi, and President Sylvestre Ntibantungaya, a Hutu, saying both were more focused than ever before on preventing a new wholesale descent into chaos.

U.S. officials have once more made clear, as six high-level U.S. missions in the past year and half have, that any government taking power in Burundi by force will not receive aid and will not be recognized.

"We want to know if it does fail, if it does get worse, that we did everything that we reasonably could to head it off," Lake said.

CNN Correspondent Bill Delaney and Reuters contributed to this report.

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