Diplomats say Western powers and the United Nations are discussing
the possible deployment of peacekeepers to Burundi if violence spirals
into a full ethnic conflict.
A woman
passes by policemen during a protest against Burundi President Pierre
Nkurunziza and his bid for a third term in Bujumbura, Burundi, June 2,
2015. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic (Reuters)
he United Nations, African Union and European Union warned on Thursday that political division in Burundi threatened to create a deep and violent regional crisis and called on both sides to meet for mediated talks.
"Alarmed
by the widening divisions, the threat for many more lives and a deep
regional crisis, we pledged to work closely together and to mobilise all
our means and instruments to prevent a further deterioration of the
situation," senior officials of the three bodies said in a joint statement.
U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, who met EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and African Union Commission chair Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma at an EU-Africa summit on Malta, told Reuters that the institutions were not setting deadlines for talks but wanted to "raise the level of concern".
In their statement, they spoke of the "urgency" of a meeting between President Pierre Nkurunziza's government and the opposition, either in Addis Ababa, where the AU is based, or in the Ugandan capital Kampala, where President Yoweri Museveni would chair talks. "No effort can be spared to achieve an end to the violence and to foster a political solution."
PEACEKEEPERS
The
statement was released four hours before the U.N. Security Council was
due to vote on a French-drafted resolution that would ask U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to report back on options for boosting the U.N. presence in Burundi.
Diplomats
say Western powers and the United Nations are discussing the possible
deployment of peacekeepers to Burundi if violence spirals into a full
ethnic conflict.
At least 240 people have been
killed and tens of thousands have fled since Nkurunziza decided in April
to run for a third term, which he won in a disputed election in July.
Nkurunziza's
bid for a new term - which many of his critics say is unconstitutional -
plunged the country into crisis, including violent clashes between
protesters and security forces in the capital Bujumbura and a series of
targeted killings.
The United Nations warned on
Monday that Burundi could be facing imminent catastrophe with violence
in danger of violence escalating into atrocities. Burundi said it was
"not in flames" and dismissed concerns of impending genocide.
Burundi
ended a 12-year civil war between Hutu rebels and a Tutsi-led army in
2005. It is the same ethnic divide that led to neighbouring Rwanda's
1994 genocide in which 800,000 people - mainly Tutsis and moderate Hutus
- were massacred.
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