President Pierre Nkurunziza said the Burundian forces serving under the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) have gone for more than one year without salaries.
“Failure by the African Union to sort out the problem by next month, Burundian soldiers will pull out of the mission,” he said.
With 5,432 soldiers in Somalia, Burundi is the second leading contributor of troops under Amisom after Uganda. Others are Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti.
The president accused the African Union of ‘undermining’ its peacekeepers whom the country spends a lot of its resources on, training and equipping them before they are sent to Somalia.
“People should know that no one can afford to pay us our soldiers’ lives and those who were injured,” he said.