Officers surrender after failed Burundi coup
A group of junior army officers who attempted a coup to oppose Burundi President Pierre Buyoya’s negotiations with Hutu rebels surrendered today, the defence ministry said.
Minister of Defence Cyrile Ndayirukiye said the 30 officers, who had billed themselves as the Patriotic Youth Front, gave up after spending the night in the studios of state-run Radio Burundi from where they had announced their coup.
Ndayirukiye said the city and the country were calm.
Buyoya, who had been in Gabon for talks with the main rebel group, the Forces for Defence of Democracy, was expected back in Bujumbura later today.
Soldiers had been stationed around the radio station in downtown Bujumbura, Burundi’s capital but were under orders not to storm the building.
The group took over the radio station at 3.30pm BST yesterday. After the guard fled, the soldiers played a tape announcing Buyoya’s removal from office, the dissolution of the National Assembly and closure of the airport.
The statement was attributed to a Lt Gaston Ntakarutimana. The group had never been heard of before.
Tutsi hard-liners have opposed any talks with the rebels, and rumours of a coup have been rampant since Buyoya signed a power-sharing agreement with 18 other parties and groups last August in Arusha, Tanzania, in the presence of former US President Bill Clinton.
The two rebel groups did not sign, insisting that what they call political prisoners must be freed first and that a cease-fire must be in place.
The Arusha agreement does not include provisions for a cease-fire.
Buyoya himself took power in a coup in July 1996, promising to end the civil war that has left more than 200,000 people dead since it erupted in October 1993 after Tutsi hardliners assassinated the country’s first democratically elected president, a Hutu.
Although Hutus form the majority in the tiny central African country, Tutsis have controlled the military, the government and business for all but a few months since independence from Belgium in 1962.
