Citation
BUJUMBURA, April 16 (Reuter) - Thousands of people attended the funeral
on Saturday of Burundi's president, killed in a rocket attack on his
plane last week in the neighbouring blood-drenched central African
state of Rwanda.
The capital Bujumbura remained calm despite tensions between the
majority Hutu people of the late President Cyprien Ntaryamira and the
Tutsi tribe, the country's former rulers.
Top army officers carried Ntaryamira's coffin out of the Roman Catholic
cathedral to a heroes' burial square in a gesture widely seen as a sign
of continued reconciliation between the Tutsi-dominated military and
the government.
Other army officers carried the flag-draped coffins of finance minister
Benard Ciiza and Cypriaque Simbizi, minister delegate for
administration and territorial affairs.
The Burundi leaders, together with Rwandan President Juvenal
Habyarimana, were killed as they returned from a regional peace summit
in Tanzania on April 6.
The death of Habyarimana triggered an ethnic bloodbath in Rwanda in
which thousands have been killed and tens of thousands have fled to
Zaire, Burundi and Tanzania.
But Burundi, already shattered by ethnic slaughter that followed the
killing by renegade Tutsi paratroops of its President Melchior Ndadaye
last year, stayed calm.
A military band played the last post as the coffins were lowered into
tombs.
Ntaryamira was the second Burundian president to be killed in seven
months. Ndadaye, the first democratically elected and first Hutu leader
of Burundi since independence from Belgium in 1962, was murdered last
October.
At the cathedral, mourners held aloft pictures of the 38-year-old
president and chanted: Fare thee well
and We shall meet in
paradise
.
Parliamentary speaker Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, elevated to acting
president, and the families of the slain leaders led mourners in
viewing the remains and laying wreaths.
It is important that no one thinks these leaders were killed by one
tribe,
Ntibantunganya told Reuters. We have seen enough bloodshed,
enough chaos, enough anarchy. It is time to heal these passions, time
to look to peace in the future.
Ntibantunganya also read a communique from the Tanzanian meeting which
called for urgent reform of the Burundi army and other security
services and demanded ethnic reconciliation.
Ntibantunganya's wife was bayoneted to death by soldiers in the failed
October coup that killed Ndadaye.
Ntaryamira, an agronomist, was elected as a compromise after opposition
leaders rejected Ntibantunganya's ascension to power.
Ndadaye's death sparked violence between the Hutus and the Tutsi
tribespeople that one minister said may have killed more than 150,000
people.
Most mourners were from Ntaryamira's Hutu tribe, who make up some 85
percent of the population. But the Tutsi, who dominate the army and top
government posts, were also present.
Archbishop Simon Ntamwana called on Burundians during the mass to learn
to live in harmony, respect each other and strive to rebuild a country
he said was on the verge of destruction as a result of hate.
(c) Reuters Limited 1994
