BUJUMBURA, June 19 (Reuters) - Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete on Tuesday urged thousands of Burundian refugees living in his country to return home, saying peace had now returned to Burundi.

Tanzania, a neighbour to Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, has one of the largest refugee populations in Africa and some officials say that has strained the environment and infrastructure in the poor east African country.

"What is the reason for the people to continue living in the refugee camps?" Kikwete said at the start of a visit to Burundi, noting that its President Pierre Nkurunziza was once a rebel leader and the government includes many former refugees.

"If people ran away and took refuge in Tanzania for insecurity matters, now they should return home because there is peace," he told a news conference.

Tanzania is still host to some 276,000 refugees, mainly from Burundi and Congo.

Successive cycles of ethnic bloodshed since independence from Belgium in 1962 have forced hundreds of thousands of Burundians to flee to neighbouring countries.

However, there has been relative stability in the tiny central African country since elections in 2005 -- part of a U.N.-backed peace deal that ended the latest civil war, a 12-year conflict that killed an estimated 300,000 people.

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