Uganda resumes peace talks with LRA rebels in Sudan
Dec 14, 2006 (JUBA) — Stop-start talks to end Uganda’s 20-year civil war resumed on Thursday in south Sudan after breaking up this month over accusations by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) that the government army had attacked it.
But President Yoweri Museveni launched a verbal broadside at his long-time foes unlikely to smooth the reconciliation process. “They normally call it Lord’s Resistance Army. In fact, it is Satan’s Resistance Army,” he told a summit in Nairobi.
In the south Sudanese capital of Juba, negotiating teams representing the government and LRA went into closed-door negotiations.
The head of the rebel delegation told Reuters he was not expecting major progress before the end of the year due to what he said was government intransigence.
“We would like to have signed this peace deal yesterday, if only the government could concede (some points),” Martin Ojul said. “It’s give and take. If you are not going to give anything, why do you expect to sign an agreement?”
Both teams met diplomats from Norway, Germany, Denmark, Britain, Sweden and the United Nations before talks restarted.
Top of the talks agenda is a review of a landmark truce signed in August and renewed last month. It has raised hopes of an end to a brutal insurgency that has killed tens of thousands and displaced 1.7 million people in northern Uganda.
CLASHES
The truce gave the rebels until this month to gather in two places in south Sudan while talks continue. But talks stalled when the rebels accused the army of attacking some of their fighters as they tried to reach one of them.
Three LRA soldiers died in the fight, they said. Independent monitors verified the clashes but said they took place east of Juba, hundreds of miles from the agreed meeting point.
Ojul said Ugandan troops should also be made to stay in assembly camps in south Sudan while talks proceeded.
Other formal agenda items are the outline for a comprehensive solution to the strife in northern Uganda, reconciliation for offences on both sides, and demobilisation and reintegration of LRA fighters into the community.
But many fear the LRA leadership, holed up in forests along the Sudan-Congo border, will never sign a peace deal unless the International Criminal Court drops charges against them.
LRA leader Joseph Kony and four others are wanted in the Hague-based court for war crimes such as killing civilians, mutilating victims, rape and abducting children to use as fighters and sex slaves.
Kony’s mother visited him in his jungle hideout this week on a trip the Ugandan government facilitated on his request — the first time they had met since he launched his rebellion in 1986.
(Reuters)