Uganda says rebel LRA regrouping in Congo

April 19, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — Uganda’s defense minister said Wednesday that rebels behind the country’s 20-year insurgency are regrouping in neighboring Congo. The defense minister appealed for international assistance to stop them before they invade.

The leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, which operated in northern Uganda and southern Sudan, fled across the border in February under pursuit from Ugandan troops. Defense Minister Amama Mbabazi said the rebels are now using a Congolese national park as a military base and have begun abducting new fighters.

“When they left southern Sudan they were really running for their dear lives, but in Garamba National Park they have had time to regroup, to rest and recruit afresh,” Mbabazi told the U.N. Security Council.

He said the LRA might join “other negative forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo to attack Uganda.”

Mbabazi called on the United Nations to order its peacekeeping missions in Sudan and Congo to help disarm the rebels and arrest group leader Joseph Kony and four of his top lieutenants. They have been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Mbabazi said Uganda was working toward an agreement with Congo that would allow Ugandan troops to hunt LRA rebels in their territory, similar to its arrangement with Sudan.

The Security Council passed a resolution in January that expressed concern about the LRA’s “brutal insurgency,” and asked Secretary-General Kofi Annan to suggest how governments in the region might stamp out rebel movements.

As one possible solution, Mbabazi suggested the U.N. empower one major country to take charge of the rebel problem. The model would be the mainly French force deployed to eastern Congo in 2003 to halt ethnic violence, or the Australian-led peacekeeping force sent to in East Timor in 1999.

The Lord’s Resistance Army is made up of the remnants of a northern rebellion that began after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, a southerner, took power in 1986. It holds no territory and is best known for kidnapping thousands of children and forcing them to become soldiers or sex slaves.

Since Ugandan troops launched an offensive in 2002, the rebels have been reduced from a force of 5,000 to an estimated 500 fighters – most of them in Congo, but with remnants scattered across northern Uganda, Mbabazi said.

The 20-year conflict has made about 2 million people homeless in what the U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, calls the world’s most neglected humanitarian crisis. The displaced have been forced to live in massive government-controlled camps.

Uganda’s Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa, however, took issue Wednesday with non-governmental organizations who have criticized conditions in the camps.

A report last month by the umbrella Civil Society Organizations for Peace in Northern Uganda noted the number of people killed weekly in northern Uganda is three times higher per capita than similar estimates for Iraq.

“There is no question that due to the threats from LRA activities the humanitarian situation facing IDPs (internally displaced people) in northern Uganda is unacceptable,” Kutesa told the Council. “However it is equally unacceptable that certain international NGOs should seek to exploit the plight of IDPs for self-serving advocacy political and resource mobilization agendas.”

Kutesa said Ugandan troops have tightened security around the camps, improving access for the residents to social services and reducing their dependence on handouts.

Kutesa also described progress toward establishing a proposed joint monitoring committee on northern Uganda, set up by Kampala with input from the U.N., NGOs, and other countries to address humanitarian concerns including resettlement of the displaced.

“The government hopes to finalize by August 2006 a comprehensive long-term peace recovery and development plan for northern Uganda,” he said.

(ST/AP)