Burundi and the World Bank signed a US $36-million agreement last Thursday to support a multisectoral project to combat HIV/AIDS in the war-torn country.

Since 1 July, 11 of the 21 people in Burundi's Ngozi Province suspected to have contracted meningitis have died - with the first cases occurring in the communes of Kiremba, Mwumba, Busiga, and Ruhoro; the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported last Thursday.

Peace talks between the transitional government in Burundi and the country's two main Hutu rebel groups have been delayed as the Forces pour la defence de la democratie (FDD) were not ready for negotiations, a Burundian official told IRIN last Thursday.

Fighting in Burundi is escalating ahead of peace talks due to take place in Tanzania on Thursday. The Burundi army says it has killed more than 200 rebel fighters in fierce fighting over the past two weeks.

Burundi's Group of 10 Tutsi parties that signed the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement to return stability to the country have threatened to pull out of the deal unless their continued marginalisation within the transitional government ends, Bonesha FM radio reported on Monday.

The UN has expressed concern at the deterioration security situation in Burundi’s east and southeastern provinces. Tensions flared on 6 July when an estimated 1,500 militia attacked the eastern province of Ruyigi, displacing up to 5 000 people.

Burundian President Pierre Buyoya said Wednesday his government will hold peace talks with Hutu rebels in Tanzania next week, a report reaching here said. Briefing journalists upon his return from Durban, Buyoya said he met on the sidelines of the African Union summit with South African Vice President Jacob Zuma and Gabon's President Omar Bongo,as well as the head of the regional initiative for Burundi, Uganda's Yoweri Museveni.

The Burundi Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) presented on Monday a coordinated plan to counter the latest cholera outbreak, the UN agency reported. Two cholera-related deaths and 101 cases have been recorded since the outbreak began on 17 June in Bujumbura Mairie, the city centre.

Burundi and Tanzania announced on Tuesday that they would send a delegation to Geneva to ask the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to facilitate the repatriation of all Burundian refugees now in Tanzania. Close to 500,000 Burundian refugees are camped in Tanzania, thousands of who have been returning home on their own or under UNHCR-sponsored operations. However, the UNHCR position is to facilitate repatriations only to safe areas, while extending "limited assistance" to refugees insisting on going elsewhere in Burundi.

Despite continuing fighting in parts of Burundi, the vaccination campaign launched last week was "moving forward as planned", Susanna Campbell, the communications officer for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), says.

A campaign to vaccinate some 3.9 million Burundian children against measles and polio has been launched, with UN agencies appealing to parties at war in the country to observe "days of tranquillity" to ensure health workers can conduct their work in safety, UNICEF announced.

The governor of Burundi's Ruyigi Province, Isaac Bujaba, has appealed for more humanitarian aid, saying that the repatriation of refugees to the area was "in full swing", government-run Radio and Television Nationale du Burundi reported. Appealing for food and non-food items, he said that if help was not received the situation could become "overwhelming" and "catastrophic".

A potentially explosive situation is looming in Burundi, where around 700 South African peacekeepers are guarding Hutu politicians. SA diplomatic efforts appear to have run onto the rocks, with Deputy President Jacob Zuma being described as “biased” by a rebel leader, while inside the country social tensions are mounting. Analysts say there is a possibility of direct intervention by Tanzanian and Ugandan troops, but that the SA forces are prepared to get out of the way of any fighting.

The Burundian human rights advocacy group, Iteka, reported on Monday that about 1,000 Congolese refugees of Tutsi origin, known as the Banyamulenge, were refusing transfer from transit camps in Bujumbura Rurale and Cibitoke to a refugee camp in northeastern Burundi where Hutu rebels are active. The Burundi government and the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees began transferring Congolese refugees to a camp in Gasorwe Commune, Muyinga Province, on 27 May. "They think their security will not be guaranteed in the new camp, which is situated close to the borders with Rwandan and Tanzania," Iteka reported.

Burundian army soldiers forced more than 30,000 civilians from their homes in Ruyigi province in eastern Burundi in late April and early May, Human Rights Watch reports. Burundian authorities have refused to allow humanitarian aid groups to provide assistance to the displaced persons, who are suffering from malnutrition and disease.

Thousands of people fled northern neighborhoods in Burundi's capital Tuesday after rebels attacked military positions a few miles away, witnesses said. National Liberation Forces rebels attacked two military positions about nine miles north of the capital's center, said a witness who did not want to be identified. The National Liberation Forces are one of two main Hutu rebel groups fighting the Tutsi-dominated army.

UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, has received just 24 percent of the funds needed to implement urgent projects for women and children in Burundi in 2002, requested as part of the UN Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal.

Despite initial denials that child soldiers are serving in the Burundi army, government and military leaders have now shown a new willingness to deal with the issue, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported on Monday.

Some 32,000 displaced people in Ruyigi, eastern Burundi, are still without aid because fighting between government and dissidents has prevented relief workers from reaching the needy in three localities in the Nyabitsinda District, an OCHA humanitarian affairs officer in Burundi said on Thursday.

The EU on Friday expressed its extreme concern over the continuing violence and worsening humanitarian situation in Burundi, particularly in Bujumbura Rural Province, a statement from the EU said.