Burundi's main Hutu rebel group this evening formally accused mediators led by South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma of being biased towards the Bujumbura government.
"The mediators want to put themselves in the place of the Bujumbura government. They are defending it," a Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) spokesman said on the third day of talks aimed at halting Burundi's nine-year-old civil war.
"Today we have written to the mediation to convey our complaints observed over recent days of confrontation," he said in Dar es Salaam.
The spokesman went on to accuse the Burundian government of "having come here for fun. Perhaps the army gave instructions as a diversion," he said.
Burundi's Hutu rebels have long insisted that the real power in Burundi lay with the Tutsi-dominated army, which they have been fighting since 1993 in a war that has claimed more than 250,000 lives, most of them civilians.
AFP