Uganda asks SPLA to beef up security for LRA rebels

Oct 7, 2006 (KAMPALA) — The Ugandan government has requested the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) to beef up security at two assembly zones in a bid to encourage the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to come.

Uganda’s State Minister for Defense Ruth Nankabirwa was quoted by New Vision on Saturday as saying the government had conveyed the message to the southern Sudanese authorities.

“One of the issues was that there was not enough deployment of SPLA to receive these people (LRA). We raised this with (chief mediator and Vice President of southern Sudan) Riek Machar and we hope they will increase their presence,” Nankabirwa said.

“This will give them (LRA) more confidence, because the issue of UPDF (Uganda People’s Defense Force) besieging them will not arise,” she said.

The two assembly zones of Ri-Kwangba and Owiny Ki-bul, both in southern Sudan, were supposed to cater for rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Uganda as agreed on in a truce signed by the Ugandan government and the LRA on August 26.

But the rebels reportedly appeared and disappeared in the assembly zones, citing alleged siege of the UPDF, Ugandan military claimed.

The UPDF deployed troops in these areas during the ‘Operation Iron Fist’ military campaign against the LRA in southern Sudan in early 2003.

The LRA have been fighting the Ugandan government for the last two decades, which has left tens of thousands of people dead and over 1.4 million others homeless in northern Uganda.

(Xinhua)