Ugandan govt seeks LRA rebel arrest waiver – BBC

July 12, 2006 (LONDON) — Ugandan’s security minister has gone to the International Criminal Court to seek support for a decision to offer amnesty to rebel leader Joseph Kony, the BBC reports on its Web site Wednesday.

The Lord’s Resistance Army chief and four of his commanders are wanted by the ICC on charges of war crimes, the BBC reports on its Web site.

Under international law, Uganda would be obliged to arrest them if they were at peace talks now due later this week. The talks are considered the north’s best chance for peace in years, but the ICC insists the warrants still hold. The negotiations, due to start in the southern Sudanese town of Juba on Wednesday, have been delayed because of differences over the composition of the LRA delegation.

Ugandan government spokesman Robert Kabushenga said they wanted the top leadership, which would include some of those indicted by the ICC, at the talks. He told the BBC Uganda was prepared to ignore the will of the ICC if the government, together with the Sudanese authorities, could reach a peace deal.

“The issue that you need to remember is that the enforcers of the international law have themselves not been very keen on enforcing it, and that is why the government decided that the option of the soft landing be pursued,” he said.

The amnesty was necessary, he said, if the talks with the LRA are to take place. South Sudan’s Vice-President Riek Machar, the talks main negotiator, is due back from the LRA’s hideout in the Democratic Republic of Congo after trying to persuade the LRA to send more senior leaders to Juba.

President Yoweri Museveni has promised he will give Kony amnesty if he renounces violence. He argues that since the U.N. failed to arrest the leaders of the LRA while they were on Congolese territory, the arrest warrants had no validity.

In a recent BBC interview, Kony denied the LRA had carried out atrocities, particularly against children. Thousands have died in the two-decade conflict between rebels and the government, and some 2 million have been forced to flee their homes.

Last week the ICC’s prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that arresting the LRA leadership was the best way to stop the conflict. “The LRA is an involuntary army and the majority of the fighters are formerly abducted children,” he said in a statement. “Arresting the top leaders is the best way to ensure that these crimes are stopped and not exported to other countries.”

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