The prospect of genocide in Central Africa has once again to be faced. Two years after the Rwandan holocaust, Burundi - with its similar ethnic mixture of majority Hutus and minority Tutsis - is on the edge of the abyss while the developed nations and international organisations look on in horror.
The incumbent President Mr Sylvestre Ntibantuganya, a Hutu, has been ousted by the Tutsi dominated army who have installed the former strongman, Major Pierre Buyoya. Thousands of Rwandan refugees have been expelled, there have been grenade attacks in the capital, Bujumbura, and 300 people have been massacred in a refugee camp.
The response from western countries and from international organisations has, so far, been confined to threatening noises. in Brussels, the European Union, has spoken of ending development aid following the coup d'etat the Organisation of African Unity has appealed to its member states to be prepared to isolate the new regime and to apply sanctions.
None of these proposed measures is capable of halting an imminent bloodbath of Rwandan proportions. in New York the United Nations "strongly condemned" any attempt to remove the legitimate government by force or coup d'etat. The UN warned that if peace talks failed, a multinational force for "humanitarian intervention" would go into action.
Those peace talks have patently failed, the internationally recognised President has fled to the embassy of the United states and a new head of state has been imposed by the military. immediate action from the international community is needed in order to keep the sides apart and prevent hostilities from spreading in intensity and in territorial extent.
Previous intervention forces have, admittedly, had an unhappy record in other African countries such as Somalia. in few cases, if any, has such action gone any significant distance towards providing a long term solution and, in some cases, complicated situations have been compounded.
Although a great deal of time has elapsed since the catastrophe in Rwanda, few lessons appear to have been learned. The actions of the Burundian army appear to have been based on a deliberate calculation that the game would be worth the candle and that whatever response the international community might make could be readily absorbed.
What has happened has not been an overnight phenomenon; a creeping campaign by extremists among the Tutsi elite, to undermine the concept of majority rule has been continuing since the murder in 1993 of the country's first democratically elected president Mr Melchior Ndadaye. International action at an earlier stage might have obviated the stark choice that presents itself today.