Uganda-LRA rebel talks delayed until Tuesday

Aug 7, 2006 (NAIROBI) — Talks between Ugandan negotiators and representatives of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in southern Sudan were delayed on Monday as the Ugandan delegation held discussions with the hosts, an official said.

“Since we arrived we have been meeting officials of the south Sudan government. Talks should now begin on Tuesday,” the Ugandan spokesman Captain Paddy Ankunda said by telephone from the southern capital Juba. He gave no details of the meeting.

South Sudan’s regional government says it wants broker an end to the LRA’s 20-year war, which has uprooted nearly two million people in northern Uganda and destabilised south Sudan.

Uganda and southern Sudan’s Vice President Riek Machar, the chief mediator of the talks, had wanted the rebel’s leader Joseph Kony or his deputy Vincent Otti to attend in person.

But both men are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and have stayed in their forest hideout in lawless eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Last week, Otti said he thoughts plans to bring him to Juba were a “trap” to have him arrested, but that he and Kony had full confidence in the existing delegation of LRA negotiators.

(Reuters)