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BUJUMBURA, Oct 25 (AFP) - Surviving members of Burundi's ousted government, holed up in the French embassy here, refused Monday to negotiate with Tutsi-led troops who they said killed the country's first Hutu president in a coup attempt last week.
Soldiers on Monday discreetly buried President Melchior Ndadaye and senior aides slain with him in last Thursday's putsch, sources close to the army said, but there was no official confirmation of the report.
Staff of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees meanwhile said that almost 250,000 people had fled into neighbouring Rwanda to escape ethnic bloodshed which followed the coup. Another 12,000 refuees were reported in Tanzania.
Refugees reported that the army had begun killing Hutus in several districts of Burundi and reports reaching the capital also spoke of Hutus rising up to massacre their historical overlords in a latest bout of the ethnic bloodletting Ndadaye had pledged to end.
A source close to the Ndadaye government said Monday that surviving cabinet ministers who sought refuge in the French embassy had turned down a call for an amnesty from the putschists, who offered in return to hand over the body of the president, elected in June.
The ministers did "not trust a rebel army" and feared that a demand for talks by the putschists, whose leadership remained unclear, was but a "trap" to lure them out of the embassy and "kill them too," the source said.
Some government officials said the plotters should be prosecuted and the army disbanded, Rwandan Radio has reported.
Several ministers called on the international community to deploy troops in Burundi to protect themselves and the Hutu majority population at large from the mainly Tutsi army.
Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Bosco Daradangue, a defence ministry official, late on Sunday went on television to criticise the position of the government, of which some members have also called for international sanctions on Burundi.
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