Aid workers say they are expecting another 2,500 displaced people on Friday in the besieged eastern Burundi town of Ruyigi, as rebels of the Forces pour la defense de la democratie scour the area looting and sometimes kidnapping school children.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson has urged Burundi's newly installed transitional government to respect and protect the human rights of all Burundians in the ethnically charged nation.

Human rights must be top of the agenda of the new transitional government in Burundi, said Amnesty International.

Topmost on the list of priorities for Burundi's transitional government inaugurated on Thursday will be to secure a permanent cease-fire and protect the lives and properties of its citizens, President Pierre Buyoya said.

Following is President Pierre Buyuoya's 26-member cabinet for the first half of a three-year transitional government inaugurated on Thursday.

Burundi took a faltering but ambitious step towards ending eight years of ethnic conflict on Thursday, as the country's dominant Tutsi elite formally embraced the Hutu majority with the installation of a transitional government of national unity.

Nelson Mandela, former South African president and mediator of the Burundi peace process, together with several African leaders, are scheduled to attend the installation of a transitional government in the Burundian capital Bujumbura on Thursday, 1 November.

Burundi's national assembly adopted by acclamation on Saturday the transitional constitution that will guide the workings of the three-year government due to begin functioning on 1 Nov., the state-owned ABP news agency reported.

A group of five pro-Tutsi political parties said on Monday they would boycott the transitional government due to be inaugurated on 1 November unless President Pierre Buyoya alters the allocation of ministerial posts he agreed with the opposition umbrella of pro-Hutu parties known as the G-7.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says it has completed in most of Burundi's seven provinces the distribution of 4,000 mt of food to some 375,000 people.

Following the conclusion of the latest round of Burundi peace negotiations held last week in Pretoria, Jean-Bosco Ndayikengurukiye, the leader of the Forces pour la defense de la democratie (FDD) Hutu rebel group, said he was "reassured" by the inclusion of Gabonese President Omar Bongo as a mediator in the talks, and suggested the FDD might be amenable to a cease-fire.

A group of seven pro-Hutu parties have laid down a 10-point plan they say must be adopted before a transitional government can be set up in Burundi as scheduled on 1 November, Radio Burundi reported.

A leading exiled Hutu politician, Jean Minani, has said over Gabon's Africa No 1 radio that he is ready to return home before the full establishment of a special protection unit for him and his colleagues.

The UN Refugee Agency's Executive Committee was told Thursday that more women should be included in the current peace talks on the central African state of Burundi.

Nelson Mandela, the chief mediator of the Burundi peace talks, said on Monday that leaders of the Great Lakes countries had agreed to "a number of issues" that had been hindering implementation of the Burundi peace agreement, Radio Tanzania reported.

Reports from Burundi say there is heavy fighting north of the capital, Bujumbura.

The Augustin Nzojibwami-led FRODEBU party faction has demanded that a people's referendum be organised so that the "Burundi people voice their opinion on the alienation of their right to elect their leaders to foreigners, the loss of its sovereignty and the partitioning of the country in G7 (Hutu) and G10 (Tutsi)".

Burundian women are fighting for more representation in the country's affairs. The Collectif des associations des ONGs feminines du Burundi (CAFOB) is at the forefront of this struggle. Its main goals are to fight for the participation of Burundian women in civil and political life, to circulate information on problems related to women and to defend their rights. IRIN interviewed its representative, Christine Ntarwirumugara.

The living conditions among the Batwa community who were recently relocated to a new site in Buterere district, in Bujumbura Mairie, are "very precarious", a recent joint assessment team of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Burundi, a representative of the Ministry of Reintegration and Reinstallation of Refugees and Displaced Populations of Bujumbura Mairie found out.

As Burundi prepares to start, on 1 November 2001, a period of transitional government and institutional reform, Amnesty International today, in an eight-page appeal, Burundi: Preparing for peace, highlighted measures which should be implemented now by the current government, political leaders, leaders of armed political movements, civil society and the international community to protect human rights.