Ugandan minister in Sudan for talks on LRA rebels

May 3, 2006 (KAMPALA) — Ugandan Defence Minister Amama Mbabazi and the chief of land forces, Lt-Gen Katumba Wamala, yesterday arrived to Khartoum to meet Sudanese officials and the UN Khartoum team over new areas of cooperation to fight Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.

The state-run SUNA reported today that Mbabazi met his Sudanese counterpart, Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein. The question of rebel LRA was at the center of their discussion.

Mbabazi travelled to Sudan after addressing the parliamentary committee on defence and foreign affairs . Mbabazi told the committee “I am on my way to Sudan to meet President Al-Bashir to reach a regional mechanism to handle Joseph Kony.”, the New Vision said.

The Ugandan minister said Kony fled southern Sudan to the DRCongo after Khartoum lifted the deadline to allow the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) to rout him.

Mbabazi said the government defence and foreign affairs officials would also move to the DRCongo to work out “how we can move together to wipe out LRA’s Kony.”

He said Kony and his deputy Vincent Otti, together with 150 “armed combatants” were in Garamba in eastern DRCongo and if given a safe haven there, they could build up.

“It is a matter we are pushing with vigour and we are sure to receive positive reports,” he said. Mbabazi said Uganda’s officials had talked to the UN Khartoum team seeking a mandate to eliminate Kony whom he said was a threat to the region.

He said Ugandan government allowed people in camps in northern Uganda to return home because there was relative peace. “LRA has been reduced to levels of local banditry and scavenging for food and sometimes attacking road users. The mop-up is succeeding.”

(ST)