Uganda LRA rebels threaten peace in S. Sudan – official

Nov 12, 2005 (JUBA) — The Lord’s Resistance Army remains a major obstacle to southern Sudan peace, the Vice President of the government of southern Sudan, Riek Machar has said. He added the LRA has “caused a lot of misery and is still the main obstacle to our peace.”

“We do not want to go back to war. We have seen enough and we want LRA to either leave southern Sudan, talk peace or we push them,” Machar said at a memorial service for the late southern Sudanese leader, Dr John Garang, in Juba on Wednesday 9 November.

According to the Ugandan the New Vision, Machar said”LRA has failed us to use the road via Nimule but we have got our units in most of the places and we hope they heed to our warning or else we shall push them out,”.

The LRA has been fighting the government since 1988, ostensibly to replace President Yoweri Museveni’s secular government with one based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.

The European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, has expressed deep concerns following the recent attacks, which targeted tourists and humanitarian workers in northern Uganda and southern Sudan.

The same sentiments were expressed by NATO and coincided with a UN report which raised the security alertness for its workers in some areas in southern Sudan and northern Uganda to the fourth level.

In a statement, Michel said it seems the Lord Resistance Army has changed its tactics, which are unacceptable by targeting tourists and humanitarian workers.

(ST)