A US special envoy, Mr Richard Bogosian, yesterday started talks with Burundian government officials and leaders of the Tutsi dominated army after reports of massacres of Hutus by the security forces.
Mr Bogosian, the US co ordinator for Rwanda and Burundi, said he would raise the issue of human rights in his meetings, which Western diplomats say underline Washington's concern about the explosive situation in Burundi.
"I will be raising human rights with the people I will be meeting," Mr Bogosian said on arrival in the Burundian capital Bujumbura on Tuesday night.
The US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, Mr John Shattuck, arrives tomorrow to join the talks, which follow reports that the army killed 235 Hutus at Buhoro, near Gitega in central Burundi, on April 26th.
Belgian newspapers also reported that about 200 people, mainly Hut us, were killed by the army in Burundi's rural Bubanza province last week. However, there are fears the figure could be as high as 1,000.
Burundi's army, almost entirely dominated by Tutsis and fighting a war against Hutu rebels, said it was investigating both incidents.
On Monday, Burundi's army confirmed an "incident" at Buhoro on April 26th, after initially denying it. But it did not confirm that soldiers killed 235 Hutus, mostly women and children, as alleged by humanitarian sources in the area.
These sources said the Buhoro slaughter took place after Hutu rebels killed 20 civilians, most probably Tutsis, and three soldiers at Buhoro.
In New York the United Nations Secretary General, Dr Boutros Boutros Ghali, on Tuesday urged member states to make plans for a standby force in case of a surge in ethnic violence in Burundi.
Hutu rebels, seeking more power for the majority Hutus, have stepped up a military campaign against the Tutsi army, and political analysts fear the small tea and coffee growing central African state could go down the same bloody path as Rwanda.
In Burundi, Hutus backed by the main rebel movement, the National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD), are pursuing an insurgency campaign to demand greater power.
Human rights groups say both Hutu rebels and the army almost routinely kill civilians. Government and UN sources, speaking before the latest reported massacre, said nearly 500 people, most of them civilians, were killed in attacks in April.
About 50,000 people were killed in 1993 after the assassination of the elected Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, by renegade Tutsi soldiers, and more than 100,000 have died since then.