The Burundi human rights organisation, Ligue Iteka, has called on the government to ratify the statute of a proposed International Criminal Court (ICC). "This would prove that the government really wants to put an end to impunity," the organisation said, according to the Net Press news agency.

President Pierre Buyoya, who returned to Burundi on Thursday, said the decision to appoint him as first leader of the transition was an "important step towards implementation of the peace agreement". Speaking on arrival from the OAU summit in Lusaka, he said the decision had been made by the peace mediator Nelson Mandela after extensive consultations with regional heads of state and the signatories of the Arusha peace accord.

Concentration of internally-displaced people (IDPs) in camps and promiscuity are to blame for the increasing rate of HIV infection in Burundi's population, and the camps have become new centres of high infection rates in the countryside, the director of Burundi's national AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases control programme, Dr. Joseph Wakana, told the Pan-African news agency (PANA) on Monday.

Burundi has called on the UN Security Council to act with delay to stop the spread of war in the country and beyond its borders. In a statement issued this week, the country's permanent representative to the UN, Marc Nteturuye, welcomed the Security Council mission to the Great Lakes region last month, noting that it was able to obtain first-hand information regarding the "transfer of the war in Congo to Burundi".