UN faults Sudan and Uganda over rebel contacts
June 12, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — A top U.N. official faulted the Sudanese and Ugandan governments on Monday for agreeing to talks with Lord’s Resistance Army leaders accused by the International Criminal Court of crimes against humanity.
“Those who are indicted have been indicted because they are responsible for mass murder of the worst possible kind, and so those who are indicted should go and face justice in The Hague,” in the Netherlands, where the ICC is based, said Jan Egeland, the U.N.’s Emergency Relief Coordinator.
He did not mention Sudan or Uganda by name.
Southern Sudan’s regional government said last week it was organising talks with LRA and Ugandan officials in hopes of convincing the group to stop fighting and leave Sudan forever.
Southern Sudan’s vice president, Riek Machar, gave elusive LRA leader Joseph Kony $20,000 (11,000 pounds) during a meeting last month near the Congo border, hoping to encourage the talks.
The LRA, notorious for killing civilians and abducting children, has waged war on Uganda’s government for 20 years, driving up to 2 million people from their homes in northern Uganda and triggering a humanitarian catastrophe.
The group has kidnapped at least 10,000 children, forcing them to kill and using them as sex slaves. LRA fighters have also set up bases in lawless parts of neighbouring southern Sudan and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti and three other top leaders were indicted by the ICC last year, accused of committing atrocities against civilians. The world police body Interpol has issued arrest warrants for the five.
New York-based Human Rights Watch last week criticised Southern Sudan’s leaders. The officials “should arrest people accused of horrific war crimes, not give them food and money,” said Jemera Rone, the group’s East Africa coordinator.
Egeland said he and other groups were trying to reach out to unindicted LRA members in Congo, Sudan and Uganda to encourage them to end their struggle, turn themselves in and return to civilian life.
While the five indicted LRA leaders must be brought to justice, “the rest can go back to school, where most of them were kidnapped from when they became terrorised into becoming child soldiers,” he told reporters.
(Reuters)