LRA rebels say Uganda’s Museveni abused them
Oct 21, 2006 (JUBA) — Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni met rebel negotiators of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) for the first time on Saturday to try to revive talks aimed at ending one of Africa’s longest and most brutal wars.
Museveni and his aides made no comment about the private unscheduled half-hour meeting at south Sudan’s parliament building. But a rebel official said the discussion was one-sided, and that the Ugandan leader had “abused” them.
“He spent all that fuel in the presidential jet and all that taxpayers’ money just to tell us we know nothing about Uganda and are foreigners,” LRA spokesman Godfrey Ayoo told Reuters.
“We were not given the opportunity to talk back, and after he abused us for five minutes, he just left.”
Most of the LRA negotiators come from Uganda’s Diaspora.
Ayoo said Museveni tried to shake hands with Josephine Apira, the one female member of the rebel delegation, but she refused and asked him to apologise for killings by his army.
“He said, ‘This is rubbish’ and walked out,” Ayoo said. “It was an exchange that suggests we still have a long way to go. It was not meaningful. … It did not improve things in any way.”
In a speech later to south Sudan’s parliament, Museveni hinted at his frustration in dealing with the insurgents, who he has often denounced as fugitives, terrorists and bandits.
He hailed southern Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar, who is the chief mediator at the stop-start peace talks, as a “very, very persistent person”.
“He knows how to deal with the unserious LRA. If it were me…” he told parliament, without finishing his sentence.
TIGHT SECURITY
The LRA has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 1.7 million in northern Uganda alone during 20 years of fighting, as well as destabilising remote parts of southern Sudan and northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
During their insurgency the LRA has become notorious for their brutal attacks on civilians: killing villagers, slicing body parts off survivors and kidnapping thousands of children to serve the cult-like group as fighters, porters and sex slaves.
A truce signed in August by the government and the LRA raised hopes of an end to the fighting. Under the deal, the rebels were supposed to gather at two locations in southern Sudan while talks to win them amnesty continued.
But independent monitors said both sides then violated the agreement: the rebels by failing to assemble, and Uganda’s military by encroaching on the locations. The rebels said they had gathered, but then fled fearing attack.
Museveni had earlier landed in Juba amid tight security as helicopter gunships circled overhead. He was met by south Sudanese President Salva Kiir and went straight into meetings.
He made no comment to journalists gathered at the airport, and a planned press conference was later cancelled.
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.
From the outset, the talks were marred by deep mistrust on both sides, and were undermined further 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)