Ugandan rebels still at large, govt agrees to extend deadline
Sept 19, 2006 (RI-KWANGBA, Sudan) — The leaders of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army were at large despite an agreement with the Ugandan government to assemble at two truce camps by Tuesday, but the government said they would be given more time.
“We will discuss with the LRA team about the new deadline for the cessation of hostilities agreement,” Interior Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said. “We need to be with a time frame so that things work out quickly.”
More than 800 rebels have arrived at the two camps set up in uninhabited areas of southern Sudan, said Maj. Gen. Wilson Deng, chairman of a Sudanese team set up to monitor the LRA. Under the truce, the rebels will be protected and monitored while a broader peace deal is negotiated.
The assembly points are at Ri-Kwangba, about 500 yards (meters) north of the border with Congo, and Owiny-Ki-Bul, just north of the Ugandan border.
Five LRA leaders, including Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti, are wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni says he won’t turn them over if they end the insurgency.
U.N. officials estimate the group has kidnapped 20,000 children in the past two decades, turning the boys into soldiers and the girls into sex slaves for rebel commanders.
If both sides reach a comprehensive deal, it will be a major breakthrough in pacifying the volatile region comprising northern Uganda, eastern Congo and southern Sudan. Rebels from all three nations operated across the borders with impunity for decades until a peace accord halted Congo’s civil war in 2003 and southern Sudanese rebels joined Sudan’s government in 2005.
The Lord’s Resistance Army was formed from the remnants of a northern Uganda rebellion that began in 1986 after Museveni, a southerner, overthrew a brutal military junta.
Kony mixed northern politics with religious mysticism, declaring himself a Christian prophet fighting to rule this country of 26 million people by the Ten Commandments.
(AP/ST)