Briefly

BURUNDI

Hutu ex-rebels win legislative elections

BUJUMBURA — President Domitien Ndayizeye urged Burundians yesterday to “accept the will of the people” after his party lost legislative elections this week to the war-ravaged country’s main ex-rebel Hutu group.

As the former rebel Forces for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) prepared to form Burundi’s first post-transition government after 12 years of conflict, Mr. Ndayizeye congratulated the victors of Monday’s voting and called for their win to be respected.

“I ask all political actors to accept the will of the people,” he told reporters at a press conference shortly after state radio reported that the political wing of the FDD, the CNDD-FDD, won 59 of 100 seats in the National Assembly, which with the Senate will select a president for the country’s first post-transition government next month.

ZIMBABWE

Officials too busy to see AU envoy

HARARE — The government said yesterday that it was too busy to receive a special envoy dispatched by the African Union to investigate the continuing demolitions of shacks and other unauthorized housing.

Bahame Tom Nyanduga, the special rapporteur responsible for refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people in Africa, arrived in Harare a week ago for a brief fact-finding mission, but he was still waiting in his hotel room yesterday.

“Given the short notice [in] advising government on the visit by … an official from the African Union, it has not been possible to accommodate him in the current circumstances,” foreign affairs spokeswoman Pavelyn Musaka said.

“Government is more focused on and preoccupied with the U.N. fact-finding mission” led by Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, who has been in the southern African country since June 26 and ends her tour tomorrow.

SOUTH AFRICA

Police disperse housing protests

CAPE TOWN — Police fired rubber bullets yesterday to disperse about 300 protesters who blocked roads and burned tires in a township northeast of here, the latest in a series of riots over housing, a police spokesman said.

Three protesters were arrested and charged with inciting public violence, and two policemen and two civilians were injured in clashes at De Doorns township, about 85 miles from Cape Town, said police spokesman Randall Stoffels. A fourth person was arrested in a separate demonstration near the sprawling township of Khayelitsha.

The protesters carried banners in Khayelitsha that read, “No Land, No House, No Vote,” referring to a threat to boycott local government elections to be held before March. Demonstrators said they were angry at officials for lending a deaf ear to their demands for better housing.

Weekly notes …

The poorest countries where food is scarcest will find it increasingly difficult to feed themselves as global warming brings droughts and desertification, a specialist from the United Nations’ food agency said yesterday. “Climate change will have a tremendous impact on food security, especially in Africa and also in some parts of Asia and Latin America,” said Wulf Killmann, who chairs a working group on global warming at the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization. … Despite open bickering between Washington and Nairobi over terrorism, corruption and debt relief, Kenya hosted its first port call by a United States warship in six years yesterday. The guided missile destroyer USS Gonzalez steamed into Mombasa for a three-day visit, the first since 1999.