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NAIROBI, Nov 16 (AFP) - Burundi is sending two ministers to OAU headquarters in Addis Ababa for a meeting ofthe pan-African body's conflicts prevention committee, following last month's coup bid in Burundi, government officials said.
The three-day meeting opening on Wednesday is to discuss Burundi's request for an Organisation of African Unity (OAU) "protection force" of several hundred men to guard ministers and strategic installations while the country recovers from the military-led uprising in which President Melchior Ndadaye was murdered.
Communications Minister Jean-Marie Ngendahayo, contacted by telephone, said he and junior cooperation minister Paul Muyembari would attend the committee session. They were due first to hold official talks in neighbouring Rwanda on Tuesday, and after Addis Ababa Ngendahayo wuld go to Uganda and Munyembari would come to Kenya, Ngendahayo said.
He said the situation had stabilised following massacres among Hutu and Tutsi which left several thousand dead and wounded and made hundreds of thousands of people flee to Rwanda, Tanzania and Zaire.
Ngendahayo, who is also government spokesman, is among surviving ministers who had been sheltering in the French embassy in the capital Bujumbura in the days after the coup.
He said they were still afraid for their lives but had begun emerging little by little, making upcountry visits to try to restore peace and security.
at/jaw/nb
