BUJUMBURA, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Guerrillas belonging to Burundi's last rebel group arrived in Bujumbura on Sunday to work alongside the government to monitor a ceasefire in the central African nation. Hundreds gathered at Bujumbura airport to welcome the 16-strong delegation from the Hutu rebel Forces for National Liberation (FNL), which was greeted by singing and dancing by the crowd. The rebels agreed a peace deal with the government in Tanzania in September but had refused to join a ceasefire monitoring team, instead demanding immunity for its members and insisting some of its fighters be freed from jail. "The FNL does not want anymore fighting but it wants lasting peace for the Burundian people," Rubin Tubirabe, head of the FNL delegation, said. Tubirabe said FNL leader Agathon Rwasa was already in Burundi to implement the ceasefire agreement. South African mediator Charles Nqakula, who brokered the peace deal, said the monitoring team, led by South Africa and which includes U.N. and African Union representatives, would begin its work on Monday. "What we shall do is to define the way forward," Nqakula told reporters. "That way forward will allow combatants of FNL to be led to areas where they will assemble. That exercise will open up a programme that will see them being integrated into the social, political and economic life of this country," he added. Burundi's Interior Minister Major-General Evariste Ndayishimiye, representing the government, welcomed the arrival. "We are very happy to receive our brothers and sisters from FNL," he said. "We want them to understand that it is now time to end the war and think about rebuilding the country which was destroyed by many years of war." The FNL is the last holdout from more than a decade of civil war that killed some 300,000 people. Their persistent insurgency was seen as a final barrier to lasting peace in a country of 7 million people who have suffered years of ethnic violence.
