Sudan urges time frame for Ugandan peace talks

March 23, 2007 (KAMPALA) — Sudanese President Omal Al-Bashir has urged the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to speed up the peace talks held in Juba, southern Sudan, a senior official said here on Friday.

Ruhakana Rugunda, the head of the Ugandan government delegationnegotiating a peace deal with the LRA, told the press here that President Bashir wanted the peace negotiations to have a time frame to assess whether they are making progress or not.

“President Bashir put it in a positive way that he would like to see faster progress being made in the talks so that the conflict in northern Uganda can come to an end formally,” Rugunda said.

Bashir made the call while meeting a team of Ugandan officials who had traveled to Khartoum, Sudan, to attend the fifth session of the Uganda-Sudan Joint Ministerial Commission that ended on Wednesday.

The peace talks which started in mid July last year have suffered several hitches including the LRA pulling out of the talks early this year demanding for a change of venue and mediatorbefore they return to the negotiation table.

Rugunda said the now stalled peace negotiations is expected to resume mid next month after a preliminary meeting, which will include the government and the LRA delegations, the chief mediatorRiek Machar who is the Vice President of southern Sudan, and former Mozambican president Joachim Chissano, who is now the UN’s special envoy to northern Uganda.

“We have been consulting over the question of dates. A tentative date of April 13 has been fixed,” Rugunda said.

The talks are seen as a chance to end the 20 year long LRA rebellion that has left tens of thousands of people dead and over 1.4 million people homeless in northern Uganda.

(Xinhua)