The UN Security Council is expected to vote on Friday on deploying a UN police force to Burundi to monitor human rights and help quell violence in the African country.
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The council backed a French-drafted resolution to send up to 228 police for an initial period of a year.
But the planned police deployment has sparked fury from the authorities, who have said they will accept no more than 50 officers.
Burundi has been wracked by turmoil since April 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza launched his campaign for a third term in office that many opposed as unconstitutional.
More than 500 people have died, many of them in extrajudicial killings blamed on Burundian police, security forces and militias linked to the ruling party, according to the United Nations. Rights groups accuse the government of violence against opposition members and protesters.
Diplomats are now negotiating how to implement the UN Security Council’s resolution.
The UN needs approval from the Burundi government to send the police.
Gerrit Van Rossum, France’s ambassador to Burundi, said it was a misunderstanding.
At least 270,000 people have fled the country.
The council threatened “targeted measures against all actors, inside and outside Burundi, who threaten peace and security” in the country. Like Rwanda, Burundi has an ethnic Hutu majority and a Tutsi minority.
“It is not at all clear to me that a council that says repeatedly that it has learned the lesson of Rwanda has in fact done so”, Power said.
Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations, speaks after a vote by the Security Council to approve sending a police force to Burundi, July 29, 2016.
She warned that the situation was “all but certain to deteriorate”.
“Police are not being deployed to protect civilians, even though civilians are in dire need of protection”.
Al Jazeera’s Daniel Lak, reporting from the United Nations headquarters in NY, said: “The ability of 228 police officers who are basically monitoring human rights and helping build capacity and reporting back to headquarters – they’re not really going to be able to do much to stop violence”.
The Security Council urged the Government to urgently meet other commitments it announced 23 February 2016, to allow all media to resume operations and release all political prisoners.
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“On the question of sending United Nations police to Burundi, it is necessary to respect the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Burundi and have full consultation with its government, in an effort to find a solution that is Burundi-led and one that is achieved through agreement by all the parties concerned”.
