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BUJUMBURA, 23 Feb (AFP) - Opposition politician Antoine Nduwayo has been named as Burundi's new prime minister by presidential decree and invited to form a new government, national radio announced Thursday.
His nomination by the President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya was a formality after his candidacy was endorsed by the majority party, the Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU), dominated by the Hutu majority.
Nduwayo, 52, an economist and former executive secretary of the Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries, which groups Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire, is a member of the main opposition faction, the Union for National Progress (the mainly Tutsi UPRONA). Until now he was the director general of an insurance company.
His first task as prime minister of the stricken country would be security, he told journalists, adding that he would do everything to restore trust between Hutu and Tutsi elements of Burundi society. His second priority would be the economy, he said.
Nduwayo replaces Anatole Kanyenkiko, the Hutu prime minister who took office as a member of the Tutsi-led UPRONA. But the opposition ousted him from the party after accusing him of going over to the majority FRODEBU camp and of not representing the opposition within the coalition government.
Kanyenkiko agreed to resign last week and asked the Hutu president to look for a replacement after an opposition-led strike paralysed the central African country and threatened an ethnic bloodbath between the minority Tutsis and the majority Hutus.
Kanyenkiko was named prime minister in February 1994 by then president Cyprien Ntaryamira, who was killed on April 6 last year at the same time as the Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana. His tenure was renewed in October 1994 by President Ntibantunganya.
dn-at/mro AFP AFP
