BURUNDI'S President has warned his country is on the brink of collapse, blaming "fanatics" from the Hutu majority as well as the Tutsi minority and the army for widespread bloodshed.
Following his New Year's speech, foreign aid agencies in Burundi were divided yesterday over whether to resume their operations in the troubled north and north-east after a wave of attacks last month.
President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya told the nation on Monday that armed fanatics of Burundi's Hutu majority were attacking the army, Tutsis and those Hutus who did not agree with them.
At the same time, Tutsi fanatics killed innocent people and looted property while "indisciplined elements" in the Tutsi dominated army also looted and killed, the Hutu president said.
"The new year must be a year in which all these phenomena are swept away and defeated," said Mr Ntibantunganya, speaking on state radio.
"If we are not vigilant enough, our country runs the risk of total collapse."
The warning from the President, who has virtually no power over the army, followed a bleak forecast on Saturday of more bloodshed and suffering in 1996 in the ethnically-split Central African country from Prime Minister Antoine Nduwayo, a Tutsi.
More than 100,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Burundi since Tutsi troops killed its first freely-elected Hutu president in 1993. Many of the dead are civilians caught in the middle of a civil war between the army and Hutu rebels.
Mr Ntibantunganya said he would do everything possible to root out of government bodies those trying to sabotage the state. He said security forces must understand they had to protect people.
"It is time Burundians, notably those within the state apparatus, put an end to certain destructive tendencies, dangerous waverings and particularly to the paralysing approach of confrontation and destruction," the president added.
A spokeswoman for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said food distribution to the north and north-east remained suspended for an 11th day on Tuesday following two attacks on its staff.
"Staff lives have been threatened, residences attacked and looted, forcing us and others to suspend our work," she said.
The UN refugee agency however said yesterday it was taking over distributing WFP food to Rwandan refugees and displaced Burundians in the north-east, a centre of the ethnic civil war.