TANZANIA has tightened an economic noose around its tiny neighbour, Burundi, to try to force its new military government from power.
Oil tankers have been halted at the borders of the landlocked country. "We've got no petrol left. We sold it all at the weekend," said a worker at one station in Bujumbura yesterday.
Clapped-out cars queued up at other stations to fill their tanks while fuel lasted in the capital, which is half-besieged by a spreading Hutu rebellion.
Tanzania was the first to enforce the embargo agreed by east and central African leaders last Wednesday to try to bring down the new military junta of Major Pierre Buyoya, the retired army officer who deposed the democratically-elected Hutu president.
The foreign minister of northern neighbour Rwanda, where the powerful Tutsi minority has sympathy for fellow Burundian tribesmen, said it was too soon to join the sanctions.
"We must give the new regime two to three weeks to see if they will legalise political parties and restore the constitution," Mr Anastase Gasana said.
Mr Damns Ntiranyibagira, the new Hutu agriculture minister, said the government planned fuel rationing and other moves to cushion the effects of the embargo.
He told Reuters that coffee and tea exports, which account for the bulk of Burundi's hard currency earnings, could come to a halt because of the blockade, but hoped new routes would be found.
. South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki arrived in Tanzania yesterday for talks with President Benjamin Mkapa on the crisis in Burundi, senior officials said.