The discussions between Museveni and Pierre Nkrurunziza, head of the Hutu rebel Forces for Defence of Democracy (FDD), centred mainly on power-sharing arrangements and were progressing "very slowly," sources at the meeting said.

"The process of peace and negotiations cannot be brief. They have been trying to find the best way forward," Museveni's spokeswoman Mary Okurut told AFP by telephone when asked why the meeting was taking so long.

Museveni and Nkurunziza took a break after meeting for four and a half hours Wednesday and were to return for another round later in the day, Okurut said.

Both Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye and Nkrurunziza arrived in Kampala on Tuesday and each held an initial round of discussions with Museveni, chairman of a regional grouping which is due to hold a summit on the Burundi peace process next week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The Burundian leader and rebel chief were due to hold face-to-face talks late Tuesday, but their meeting was delayed to allow the Ugandan leader to wrap up his discussions with Nkurunziza, Okurut said.

"President Museveni is listening to both sides to try to iron out differences so that at the upcoming summit, heads of state can easily reach a global accord and a definitive ceasefire," FDD spokesman Gelase Daniel Ndabirabe told AFP by telephone from Burundi.

The talks in Kampala, aimed at reviving a moribund ceasefire signed between Burundi's power-sharing government and the FDD in December 2002, are the latest in a long series of peace talks aimed at ending Burundi's war.

The civil war in the tiny central African nation has pitted mainly Hutu rebel groups against their Tutsi rivals who controlled the central African country's government until the interim regime, now led by Ndayizeye, was set up in November 2001. Tutsis still dominate the military in the central African country.

But the December truce was violated almost from its signing, with both sides accusing the other of breaching it.

In Burundi Wednesday, local government sources said that some 15,000 civilians have fled fighting in the west of the country, where fresh overnight clashes between rebel movements claimed four lives.

The civilians fled from an area east of the capital where FDD rebels had already been fighting with those of the smaller National Liberation Forces (FNL) over the weekend, the sources said.

FNL spokesman and senior adviser Pasteur Habimana confirmed that the clashes, the first between Burundi's two main Hutu rebel factions since 1996, had resumed, but FDD spokesman Gelase Daniel Ndabirabe denied that any fighting had been taking place.

In the most recent round of peace talks in Pretoria, the South African capital, last month, the FDD demanded that it be given key posts in the interim government, including a new vice presidency, the speaker of parliament and the head of the army.

"In addition to those posts, we want to be represented in all sectors of life in the country, we want to be involved in all decision-making bodies," FDD spokesman Ndabirabe said Wednesday.

But Bujumbura has rejected the rebels' demands, arguing, among other things, that the peace pact setting up the interim government provided for only one vice presidency.

The deal was signed in 2000 in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha between political groupings but shunned by the rebels.

The government has argued that creating another vice presidency would disturb the ethnic balance crafted for the executive in the peace plan.

Burundi's interim government, set up in November 2001, is currently led by Ndayizeye, a Hutu, with Alphonse Marie Kadege, a Tutsi, holding the vice presidency.

The FDD is also demanding equality both in the high military command and in regional military commands, Ndabirabe said.

Finally, they want immunity for "everyone and covering all acts committed since the start of the civil war," he added.

More than 300,000 people have been killed in Burundi's civil war, most of them civilians.

"The demands of the FDD differ so greatly from the government's proposals that they can't reach an agreement themselves," a Western diplomat said in Bujumbura on Wednesday.

"An accord could be reached at the (Dar es Salaam) summit if the heads of state take decisions for the belligerents," said the diplomat, who asked not to be named.

"But will that solution be accepted by both sides? That's the question."

WAR.WIRE