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DAR ES SALAAM, March 2 (AFP) - A high-level contact meeting between the Rwandan government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels that was due to start here on Wednesday has now been postponed to Friday following failure by the RPF to arrive, it was announced here Tuesday.
Tanzanian foreign ministry director Ami Mpungwe told AFP that the RPF delegation had failed to get a flight from Bujumbura in neighbouring Burundi, where it has been attending an all-party Rwandan meeting.
Instead, Mpungwe said, the RPF team to be led by its chairman Alex Kanyarengwe, would now fly in on Thursday, ready for the two-day meeting on Friday and Saturday.
Rwandan Prime Minister Dismas Nsengiyaremye, at the head of a government delegation, is also now expected to arrive here on Thursday from the Rwandan capital, Kigali, Mpungwe said.
The high-level contact meeting has been convened by Tanzanian President Ali Hassan Mwinyi in his capacity as the official facilitator of the Rwanda peace process aimed at salvaging the deadlocked peace talks at Arusha in northern Tanzania.
Friday's meeting will be chaired by Tanzanian Prime Minister John Malecela and will seek a solution to various issues related to violations of and non-compliance with last July's internationally brokered ceasefire agreement.
It will also seek assurances from both the Rwandan government and RPF rebels on their commitment to agreements and protocols already concluded in Arusha during the eight-month-long peace negotiations.
The Arusha talks were postponed indefinitely early last month after renewed fighting in the central African nation, which the RPF said it had to start in order to stop what it claimed was a massacre of the minority Tutsi peasants by forces of the majority ruling Hutu regime of President Juvenal Habyarimana.
HB/lto/bm AFP AFP SEQN-0343
