Uganda says ready to resume peace talks with rebels
Jan 16, 2007 (KAMPALA) — Ugandan government negotiators are ready to resume peace talks with rebels that have waged a 19-year conflict once the rebels return to the table, the interior minister said Tuesday.
On Friday, officials of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army said they had withdrawn from the Sudan-mediated talks in southern Sudan, questioning Sudan’s neutrality. They said they would only resume if a neutral venue, such as Kenya, was found. The talks had been scheduled to be resume in Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, on Monday, after a recess.
“We did not go to Juba yesterday because we got information that…rebels were not there,” Interior Minister Ruhanga Rukunda told journalists Tuesday. “We are also making consultations with President (Yoweri) Museveni. We will go to Juba when preparations being made are ready.”
He said the rebels’ latest walkout was temporary.
Lord’s Resistance Army officials said they withdrew from the talks because on Jan. 9 Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said the only solution to the northern Uganda conflict, that has spread into Sudan, is a military one.
At the same occasion to mark the second anniversary of a north-south Sudan peace deal, Southern Sudan’s President Salva Kiir said that his government was losing patience with delays in the talks, and accused Sudan’s national army of supporting the rebels, something al-Bashir denied.
Rugunda questioned the reason the rebels gave for pulling out, saying Ugandan officials had established the Sudanese president “did not in anyway threaten to attack” the rebels.
Peace talks started in July. They produced a landmark – if fragile – truce and an agreement on how to go forward. But they have been slowed in part because the rebel negotiators have to break periodically to consult with their leader, Jospeh Kony, at his rear base in Congo.
The Lord’s Resistance Army is made up of the remnants of a rebellion that began after Museveni took power in 1986. The rebels are notorious for cutting off the tongues and lips of civilians and abducting thousands of children, turning the girls into sex slaves and the boys into fighters.
The northern Uganda conflict has spilled over into neighboring countries, including Sudan.
If both sides reach a comprehensive deal, it will be a breakthrough in pacifying northern Uganda, eastern Congo and southern Sudan.
(AP)