Burundi's security forces will begin integrating 3,500 fighters from the country's last rebel group next month in another step towards peace in the small central African nation, Reuters quoted mediators as saying today. Under the agreement 2,100 former combatants from the Hutu Forces for National Liberation (FNL) will join the army, while the remaining 1,400 will got to the police. All the former rebel fighters will be retrained for their new jobs. Lieutenant-General Derrick Mgwebi, special envoy of South African chief mediator Charles Nqakula, told reporters that process would begin next month after the FNL fully disarms. "Once all the weapons are taken over, the mediators will inform Burundi's government that the FNL combatants are officially disarmed, then the government will proceed to their integration," he said. "There is a light at the end of turmoil." The FNL signed a peace deal in mid-2006 that ended two decades of ethnic war, but tensions have remained high.
