BURUNDI's mainstream Hutu party, Frodebu, ruled out any deal yesterday with its country's new Tutsi military regime.
"Those who think that any Frodebu leader will join the new government are dreaming, however powerful they are," Mr Pierre Claver Nahimana, agriculture minister in the ousted government, said in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Diplomats and regional analysts say the retired officer, Maj Pierre Buyoya, installed as head of state in last Thursday's coup, is trying hard to recruit credible Hutu politicians.
His search, fruitless so far, has delayed the formation of his government.
"Buyoya may be able to find a few Hutus to join him but they will not get any top Frodebu people," Mr Nahimana said. He and the Frodebu chairman, Mr Jean Minani, were in Tanzania during the coup and are now watching developments from Nairobi.
He said they hoped to attend tomorrow's regional summit on Burundi in Arusha, Tanzania although they had not been invited.
Maj Buyoya was named head of state by the Tutsi dominated army and has since mounted a charm offensive, saying he wants peace and reconciliation with majority Hutus.
Senior Frodebu members told a news conference in Brussels there would only be talks between the parties in the Burundi conflict, in which more than 150,000 people have been killed in the past three years, when the fighting factions had been separated by an international intervention force.
Until then there would be no talks with the current army regime and no participation in any Buyoya government.
We can only negotiate with coup leader Buyoya . . . if he returns power to those who are entitled to it [as a result of elections]," a Frodebu executive member, Mr Isidore Nadayrinde, said.
Mr Nahimana said in Kenya he was aware that some foreign powers wanted credible Hutus to compromise with Maj Buyoya and prevent further bloodshed.
He said President Clinton's special envoy on Burundi, Mr Howard Wolpe, had promoted that message in the tense days before the coup.
But the Frodebu leadership was standing firm, he said. Frodebu in Brussels said it had no plans to link up with the main exiled Hutu rebel movement, the National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD), and its armed wing, FDD.
"The CNDD is separate and Frodebu is separate," a Frodebu representative said. Just like the CNDD, we fight against the coup.
CNDD was founded by the former interior minister and Frodebu stalwart, Mr Leonard Nyangoma, in 1994. He rejected Frodebu's decision to accept a power sharing arrangement with the main Tutsi party, Uprona.
In the past two years CNDD/FDD has become a powerful rebel force fighting a vicious guerrilla war against the army. Both sides have been committing massacres of civilians accounting for at least 1,000 lives a month.
Before the coup, Frodebu was losing its centrist Hutu support to Mr Nyangoma and the CNDD, diplomats and Burundian politicians said.
9
Clinton focuses on terror in US and abroad
By GRETCHEN COOK
--(AFP, Reuter)
WASHINGTON
PRESIDENT Clinton held talks about terrorism on the home front yesterday as security chiefs from the world's seven richest countries and Russia were preparing to address the issue on a global scale.
Mr Clinton met the Attorney General, Ms Janet Reno, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Mr Louis Freeh, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Newt Gingrich, to discuss measures for tracing explosives and tapping phone lines.
Ms Reno will also attend the Group of Seven (G7) meeting in Paris today where two US tragedies in as many weeks have injected new urgency into the summit.
The explosion on Saturday at the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta and the crash of TWA flight 800 on July 17th prompted the White House meeting yesterday to reconsider controversial domestic security measures.
The two main steps under review have raised an outcry from both ends of the political spectrum the gun lobby and civil libertarians and they were eliminated from Mr Clinton's 1994 anti terrorism bill by the Republican led Congress.
But a White House spokes woman, Ms Mary Ellen Glynn, said that the time is ripe for reconsideration.
However, Ms Glynn said the G7 summit is likely to be foremost in Mr Clinton's mind as his call for sanctions against Iraq Iran, Libya and Sudan faces opposition at the Paris meeting.
US trade partners are already criticising Washington's moves against foreign companies investing in Cuba and now Mr Clinton plans to impose sanctions on any firm putting at least 540 million in the oil or gas sectors of Iran and Libya.
The G7 members Britain, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US and Russia are to discuss 25 proposals on asylum and extradition, terrorist communications and cross border financial networks.
At home, Mr Clinton wants to require manufacturers to put chemical markers in powder explosives to facilitate tracing. He also wants to increase the federal authority to tap phones.
The FBI yesterday denied it was about to release a sketch of a prime suspect in the Atlanta bombing.
The Washington Post, quoting FBI sources, said that witnesses had spotted a white male wearing what looked like military clothes.
French public television briefly displayed what it said were police sketches of two suspects. The station refused to say where or how the sketches had been obtained, other than to identify them as prepared by US authorities".
. Greece wants to revive a debate on making it the permanent site for the Olympic Games, especially since the Atlanta bombing. After this event, Greece's position on becoming the permanent host for the Olympic Games has been reinforced," a government spokesman said.
. Seattle prosecutors charged eight militia members with conspiracy yesterday after FBI agents discovered pipe bombs and machine guns.