Sepp Blatter said yesterday that he offered Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza a role with FIFA to coax him from office amid a brewing political crisis, following a request for help from Switzerland and the US.  
In an e-mail to AFP, the Swiss foreign ministry said it sought Blatter’s aid in defusing tensions in Burundi, but gave no confirmation that Bern asked him to offer Nkurunziza a job or that the US was involved.  
Before his dramatic downfall as FIFA’s president, Blatter often boasted about his ties with heads of state and on Thursday made clear that he repeatedly conducted informal diplomacy for Switzerland while travelling abroad.  
“Switzerland, which wanted to protect Burundi’s interests, asked me to speak to President Pierre Nkurunziza, who is also a huge football fan, to persuade him not to run”, for reelection, Blatter told journalists at the launch of a new authorised biography, Mission Football.  
The request was made in May of last year, as Nkurunziza was pursuing a controversial third term, which he went on to win in a vote that sparked an ongoing and deadly political crisis.  
“We suggested that he become an ambassador for football within Africa and outside.  
“President Nkurunziza said ‘I am very touched.’ I urged him. He thought about it and after a moment he answered ‘no, I will still run,” Blatter further said.   
Swiss foreign ministry spokesman Stefan von Below confirmed “there was a contact between State Secretary Yves Rossier and Mr. Joseph Blatter.
“The intention was to contribute to a peaceful solution in order to prevent the current crisis in Burundi,” von Below further said.  The Swiss foreign ministry “never asked president Nkurunziza not to run for the office of president again,” he added.  
Blatter told journalists that his Burundi intervention was not exceptional.  
He said he typically informed Swiss diplomats about his travels and he was often helpful in making connections with heads of state.  
“Football opens doors,” said Blatter, a native of the Swiss canton of Valais.  
Reacting to an article in Swiss media about Blatter’s diplomatic efforts, Burundi’s presidential spokesman Willy Nyamittwe wrote in a tweet: “they tried everything they could to trample the fundamental principles of democracy in #Burundi. We defeated them.”
Nkurunziza, who claims he was chosen by God to lead Burundi, has previously said that a number of prominent figures urged him not to seek reelection but he ignored those calls, judging them messages from “the devil.”

‘No longer suffering’
Blatter said yesterday he was no longer suffering as a result of the corruption scandals which led to his six-year ban from football.
“I did suffer. Christ’s Passion was also suffering, but I am no longer suffering,” he said.
Blatter said he can “live with all because I have a clean conscience. I have done nothing wrong.”
Blatter, 80, was banned by FIFA’s ethics committee over ethics breaches concerning a “disloyal payment” of 2 million Swiss francs (about 2 million dollars) made to UEFA president Michel Platini in 2011.
But the former FIFA boss, who is appealing against his ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, described it as “conspiracy” by US justice authorities
In the book, Sepp Blatter: Mission and Passion Football, Blatter says his successor as FIFA president, the former UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino, once applied “without success” for a job at FIFA’s legal department.