GREAT LAKES: Burundi summit for Wednesday in Dar es Salaam

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

KAMPALA, 17 Aug 2004 (IRIN) - Heads of state from countries in and around the Great Lakes are due to meet on Wednesday to ratify a post-transition power-sharing agreement between Burundian political groups.

The meeting is to take place in Tanzania's main commercial city, Dar es Salaam, and will be chaired by Uganda.

A massacre of 160 Congolese refugees in Burundi last Friday is likely to be high on the summit's agenda, Julius Onen, permanent secretary in Uganda's Foreign Affairs ministry, told IRIN.

The heads of state are expected to discuss and ratify an agreement reached earlier this month in Pretoria between 20 of Burundi's political parties.

The agreement provides for a government and national assembly that would be 60 percent Hutu and 40 percent Tutsi. It also provides for two vice-presidents from different ethnic communities and political groups.

The summit agenda also includes the election process and timetable. The elections are supposed to be held by 31 October, when the three-year transitional period in Burundi ends.

The mediator of the Burundi peace process, South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, is to release a progress report. The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative to Burundi, Carolyn McAskie, is to release another report on talks she held with the rebel Forces nationales de liberation led by Agathon Rwasa. Rwasa's rebel movement is the only one that has not yet laid down it arms.

States expected to attend include Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Officials from the UN, the African Union and European Union have also been invited.

Some 300,000 people have died in Burundi since rebels from the Hutu majority took up arms in 1993 against the Tutsi-led government and army.

[ENDS]