Burundi president skips summit to campaign

Burundi's embattled president skipped key regional talks Monday, staying at home to campaign for a controversial third term as a rebel general threatened to step up attacks.

The crisis in the central African nation surrounds President Pierre Nkurunziza's bid to stand for a third consecutive five-year term in office, a move branded by opponents as unconstitutional and a violation of a peace deal that brought an end to years of civil war in 2006.

Leaders of the five-nation East African Community (EAC) bloc had been due to meet Monday in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam, but Nkurunziza instead sent his foreign minister.

Nkurunziza stayed in Burundi to lead his presidential campaign in the central Mwaro and Gitega regions.

Meanwhile rebel general Leonard Ngendakumana, who took part in a failed coup in May, has vowed further attacks until the government is overthrown.

"After we saw that we could not succeed our coup on May 15, we found it was necessary to keep fighting so that we can push Nkurunziza to keep thinking about what he is doing and maybe just resign," Ngendakumana told Kenya's KTN news channel in an interview broadcast late Sunday.

"All those actions that are going on in the country, we are behind them and we are going to intensify them until Pierre Nkurunziza understands that we are there to make him understand by force that he has to give up his third term."