Burundi rebels starting to disarm

Burundi's army will absorb more than 2,000 former rebels African Union troops are physically disarming 21,000 fighters from Burundi's last active rebel group, the Forces for National Liberation (FNL).  It follows a weekend ceremony where FNL leader Agathon Rwasa symbolically surrendered his own weapons to the AU. A grenade attack killed six people but the BBC's Prime Ndikumagenge says it was not linked to the rebels. But he says it shows how many weapons are circulating in Burundi following more than 10 years of ethnic conflict. According to the AFP news agency, estimates put the number of weapons owned illegally at between 100,000 and 300,000. Asked if he would ever take up arms again, he replied: "No. "This decade of fighting is enough to teach every Burundian we have to refrain from whatever has been the cause of violence in the country." The ethnic Tutsi minority has long held power in Burundi. More than 300,000 people were killed in the civil war sparked in 1993 by the assassination of Burundi's first Hutu head of state and democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye. In the peace process that followed, former Hutu rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza became president in 2005 - and posts in the previously Tutsi-dominated army have been split equally between Tutsis and Hutus. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8009756.stm