Burundi: President Pierre Nkurunuziza names new cabinet.

(SomaliNet) In a bid to break a deadlock that has seen the opposition boycott parliament for months over accusations of human rights abuses and high-level graft,Burundi\'s President Pierre Nkurunuziza has named a new cabinet.

Late on Wednesday, the former rebel appointed 19 ministers and seven deputy ministers - many of them from the ranks of the opposition FRODEBU and UPRONA parties.

Both had been boycotting parliament since July, demanding the previous cabinet be sacked.

\"We hope that Burundi is going to have a stable government able to deal with the biggest challenges which are security recovery, economic revival and fight against corruption and embezzlement,\" FRODEBU Chairperson Leonce Ngendakumana said.
Last week, Vice President Martin Nduwimana quit under pressure from members of his former party, UPRONA, who had earlier voted to oust him for working with the government.

Burundi had been lauded as an African success story, but criticism grew when an influential ruling party chief was accused of engineering the trial of opposition leaders including the former president, accusing them of a coup plot.

The former president was acquitted, but others arrested in the trial said they had been tortured while in custody. The ruling party chief was subsequently arrested and has been in jail since on charges of instigating anti-government violence.

Since his election in 2005, Nkurunziza has struggled to forge a stable government, stamp out corruption and rejuvenate a moribund economy largely reliant on coffee and tea exports.

But he has generally won praise for keeping relative stability in the tiny central African nation, and for bringing the last remaining rebel group, the Hutu Forces for National Liberation, to peace talks.-Reuters