Burundi's main opposition Hutu party expelled three ministers in the young power-sharing government on Saturday, dealing a blow to reconciliation efforts, Reuters reported. The FRODEBU party pulled out of the seven-month old government last week, accusing President Pierre Nkurunziza's coalition of failing to promote democracy and abide by a constitutional agreement on power-sharing. The party's ministers for public health, agriculture and livestock, and land management and tourism had refused to resign their cabinet posts. "The party has decided to exclude the three ministers because they refuse to abide by the party's decision to withdraw from the government," FRODEBU chairman Leonce Ngendakumana said. "The ministers did not present their resignations like the party had demanded ... These ministers have no prerogative to engage the party in the government," he told a news conference. Nkurunziza's swearing-in as president of the tiny central African country in August was the crowning moment of a 2000 peace plan to end 12 years of ethnic conflict, pitting rebels from the Hutu majority against a Tutsi elite. Some 300,000 people were killed in Burundi's civil war.
