Uganda’s Museveni pushes talks with LRA rebels

Oct 21, 2006 (JUBA) — Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni flew to Sudan on Saturday to try to revive talks with Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, who are accused of massacring civilians and kidnapping tens of thousands of children.

Museveni made no comment to reporters at the airport in the southern Sudan capital Juba, where helicopter gunships circled as he landed. He was met by south Sudan’s President Salva Kiir before going straight into meetings.

The LRA insurrection has killed tens of thousands and uprooted 1.7 million in northern Uganda alone, as well as destabilising remote parts of southern Sudan and northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The rebels’ top leaders are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and have said they will not sign a peace deal unless the indictments are dropped.

Aides said Museveni would address south Sudan’s parliament and consult Uganda’s delegation at the stop-start negotiations with the LRA guerrillas.

But the focus of his trip was meeting Kiir and his deputy, southern Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar, who is the chief mediator at talks that began in July and had been seen as the best chance of ending the rebels’ two-decade insurgency, one of Africa’s longest and most brutal wars.

From the outset, the talks were marred by deep mistrust on both sides, and were undermined this week by the killing of at least 38 civilians in ambushes south of Juba. The rebels and Uganda’s military each accused the other of carrying out the attacks.

(Reuters)