After the experience of Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda and other countries where intractable racial or clan rivalries have been the despair of diplomats and/or military strategists, it is not surprising that the international community is reluctant to get embroiled in, the ongoing travails of Burundi. The seizure of power by the Tutsi strongman, Major Pierre Buyoya, was only arguably the point at which action should have been taken. As Ms Burton, the junior Minister for Foreign Affairs, has pointed out in a letter to this newspaper, a long and careful process of mediation has been under way under Mr Julius Nyerere, the former president of Tanzania, to try to end the conflict between Hutus and Tutsis. There is a lively awareness of the danger for regional stability if Burundi follows Rwanda into mass slaughter.
Yet, though there are also regional proposals for military intervention, only one country - Ethiopia has actually undertaken to take part in a UN financed force, and three others - Chad, Malawi and Zambia - have in the past offered troops. The likelihood of a 50,000 strong international mission being formed - the number that the UN secretary general, Dr Boutros Ghali, says is required - is remote, justifying his reported comment that the response of UN members "has not yet matched the urgency and seriousness of the situation".
The dilemma is comparable with those faced ill Bosnia and Somalia, and the outcome, whatever the international organisations decide to do, is equally uncertain. Matters have been complicated politically by the Buyoya take over because of the economic embargo imposed by neighbouring states.
Major Buyoya's coup d'etat may be the step that carries Burundi over the threshold into all out civil war, leading to the genocide of Rwanda proportions that Dr Boutros Ghali has warned about. It is more likely to have this consequence if force, military or economic, is resorted to at the expense of intensified diplomatic and political efforts to find a long term settlement. The new strongman, ironically, has a track record of consistently attempting to introduce acceptable power sharing mechanisms to end the endemic conflict. In 1993, six years after deposing his predecessor and seizing power, he announced elections and, when the Hutu candidate, Mr Melchior Ndadaye, secured, two thirds of the vote to his one third, he voluntarily left office.
President Ndadaye's assassination less than four months later in an army revolt, (allegedly organised by supporters of an earlier president, Mr Jean Baptiste Bagaza) was the start of mounting political instability and ethnic killings. Neither of his successors, including President Sylvestre, Ntibantunganya who was deposed by Major Buyoya in July, was elected by popular vote, and Mr Ntibantun an a controlled, neither the Tutsi dominated army nor, the Hutu militias recruited by his hardline rival, Mr Leonard Nyangoma. Any attempt to mediate a solution will have to take account of a seriously fragmented political situation, in which real power not be easy to find.