Ethiopia, Mozambique and South Africa will send 3,500 peacekeepers to enforce a truce ending nearly 10 years of civil war in Burundi, the state-owned news agency said Wednesday. Defense ministers of the three peacekeeping nations said after a two-day meeting they had "finalized preparations and worked out a plan" to send the force to Burundi, the Ethiopian News Agency said.

Burundi's hardline Hutu rebel group expressed satisfaction with its first round of peace talks with government and military representatives in Switzerland. "The meeting was very constructive, it laid a good start for the talks," Pasteur Habimana, spokesman for the National Liberation Forces, or FNL, said in Bujumbura. "Though it was only a first meeting, we truly discussed the historic causes of the Burundi conflict."

An army officer, his bodyguard and 13 rebels died last Thursday during heavy fighting between government forces and rebels of the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces pour la defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD)faction led by Pierre Nkurunziza, a Burundi Defence Ministry official told IRIN.

Burundi's transitional government and the country's main rebel movement, Pierre Nkurunziza's faction of the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces pour la defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD), recommitted themselves on Sunday to implementing past agreements to end nearly 10 years of civil war.

An association of theatre groups in Burundi has developed innovative ways of sensitising internally displaced persons (IDPs) about their rights. The latest issue of Forced Migration Review, published by the Refugee Studies Centre and the Norwegian Refugee Council, details how the association, known as Tubiyage, stages plays in IDP camps to tell the people about their rights.

Fighting has broken out near Burundi's capital, where several soldiers were killed by rebels, local officials and rebel sources said on Saturday as the president flew out for a peace parley. The clashes came as President Pierre Buyoya left Bujumbura for peace talks in neighbouring Tanzania with the main rebel movement, saying he hoped it would be the last ceasefire parley.

Recent attacks by government troops, and the pullout of the main rebel force from a ceasefire agreement, are combining to put civilians in Burundi in growing danger, Human Rights Watch says in a new briefing paper. Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio de Mello to encourage the new African peacekeeping force in Burundi to protect civilians.

The African Union (AU), the continent's foremost political body, has appealed to Burundi's warring parties and their leaders to "show restraint and a spirit of compromise with a view to preserving the gains made and to complete the process of restoring peace to the country".

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has announced that it is "set to close" two temporary border sites in western Burundi that had been sheltering at least 10,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since October 2002.

Developments over the last two months, including ceasefire agreements that have brought all but one rebel group into political negotiations and the anticipated deployment within weeks of an African Union military observer mission, have created more momentum for peace in Burundi than at any time since the civil war began ten years ago. But donor reluctance to resume major aid has become counter-productive and peace dividends are needed to give rebels an incentive to accept disarmament and reintegration into society and to provide the international community leverage with which to press the transitional government to carry out its commitments under the Arusha peace accord, says the International Crisis Group.

We're looking for an experienced and motivated individual to represent Christian Aid in Burundi. With responsibility for Christian Aid's Burundi programme, you will manage the staff and field office, develop Christian Aid's policy and programme, and contribute to the strategic planning of the wider team.

The World Food Programme (WFP), in partnership with World Vision, has launched a major school-feeding programme in the northern Burundi province of Karuzi, thereby boosting the chances of higher school attendance rates among otherwise hungry pupils.

After almost a decade in exile, two of Burundi's key rebel leaders are due to return to the country following the signing of the ceasefire agreement last year. Analysts say this will help the peace process in Burundi.

We're looking for an experienced and motivated individual to represent Christian Aid in Burundi. With responsibility for Christian Aid's Burundi programme, you will manage the staff and field office, develop Christian Aid's policy and programme, and contribute to the strategic planning of the wider team.

Despite having no electricity, coupled with an unreliable telephone system, Burundian refugees living in camps in northwestern Tanzania can now access the Internet, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refuges (UNHCR) reported last Wednesday.

The plot is pure le Carré, but tailored for the tropics. A bloodied body washes up on a lake shore in a central African country. The nation is shocked when the victim turns out to be a top United Nations official, clubbed to a pulp and flung to the crocodiles. Who could commit such a crime? Local police scramble into action, and make their arrests. But something smells rotten. A dogged reporter starts digging in the city's murky underworld. Soon a web of intrigue unfolds including rogue army officers, Western aid money and, maybe, the country's most powerful men.

With responsibility for Christian Aid's Burundi Programme, you will manage the staff and field office, develop Christian Aid's policy and programme, and contribute to the strategic planning of the wider team.

Thousands of civilians have fled fresh fighting between government troops and Hutu rebels in Gitega Province, the spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Burundi, Nicholas McGowan, reported.

The Implementation Monitoring Committee of the Arusha peace accord has urged the transitional government of Burundi and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to include it in visits to the interior aimed at identifying and resolving the major difficulties of repatriated and internally displaced people.

The UN has prepared a coordinated multi-sectoral response to a malnutrition crisis it says is "likely to occur" in the country due to a poor harvest.