The African Union (AU) is to send a mission to troubled Burundi to press the government to accept a peacekeeping force after the Burundian president rejected such a move, a senior AU official said after a summit on Sunday.
African leaders, who held a two-day summit, might also ask the UN Security Council to exert pressure with a possible sanctions threat if it refuses, a senior Western diplomat who followed the proceedings said.
Officials said a final communique was awaiting clearance from African capitals. The senior official and diplomat were citing its main points before it was endorsed.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council announced plans in December last year to deploy a 5,000-strong force, saying it could invoke an article of the AU’s charter that allowed it to intervene whether or not the government agreed.
Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza, whose bid for a third term angered opponents and sparked months of violence, rejected it.
Western powers are pressing African states to intervene to prevent Burundi sliding back into the kind of ethnically charged conflict it witnessed in a civil war that ended in 2005.
“We want dialogue with the government of Burundi,” AU Commissioner for Peace and Security Smail Chergui told reporters after the summit, saying that “a high-level” delegation would seek Burundi’s approval to deploy the force.
He did not give further details, but the senior Western diplomat said the AU was also expected to ask the UN Security Council to pass a Chapter 7 resolution, “which could mean sanctions if the Burundians remain defiant.”
Chapter 7 of the UN charter covers the council’s authority to enforce decisions with sanctions or military force.
The diplomat said he understood that African leaders had endorsed the peacekeeping force “with a mandate to disarm militias and protect civilians, in addition to a larger human rights observer mission.”
Those details could not be confirmed.
When Chergui was asked if more AU monitors would go to Burundi, he said: “That question is too early.”
Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, whose nation is on the 15-member AU Peace and Security Council, on Saturday said that some African states were against sending any peacekeepers to Burundi against its will.
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