Burundi Keeps Seat on Security Body, Complicating Peacekeeper Plan
Addis Ababa. Burundi kept its seat on the African Union's peace and security council in elections, diplomats said, a move that could complicate plans to send peacekeepers to the troubled country against its will.
The bloc wants to deploy 5,000 peacekeepers in the central African state, where hundreds have died in the worst violence since an ethnically charged civil war ended in 2005.
But President Pierre Nkurunziza - who triggered the crisis by standing for a third term in July elections - has rejected the plan drawn up by the AU council, saying the arrival of any such force would be seen as an invasion.
Burundi kept it place on the security council unopposed in an election of member countries on Thursday, after a lack of rival contenders from its region gave it a clear run.
"There wasn't any other choice but to rubber-stamp Burundi's entry," said one diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Burundi will not be able to vote directly against the peacekeepers - rules bar countries from voting on motions about their own affairs.
But diplomats said it could still use its prominent position to influence debates.
"It has propaganda value for the government," said Liesl Louw-Vaudran, an analyst with the Institute for Security Studies, referring to Burundi's re-election.
African Union leaders are expected to try to persuade President Nkurunziza to accept the force during the AU summit scheduled for the weekend. But diplomats said they were not optimistic that he would change tack.
Nkurunziza won the July election that was boycotted by most of the opposition. Opponents said a third term violated the constitution. Loyalists cited a court that said he could run.
More than 400 people have been killed in protests and crack-downs over the past nine months, raising worries of a return to the kind of conflict that pitted Burundi's Tutsi minority against the Hutu majority in the civil war.
The renewed violence has rattled a region where memories of the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda are still raw. Burundi and Rwanda share the same ethnic mix.
Reuters
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