Ugandan rebel breaks silence, threatens president
NAIROBI, April 14 (Reuters) – The elusive leader of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebels broke his long silence by accusing the army of carrying out atrocities blamed on his movement and threatening to kill President Yoweri Museveni.
Joseph Kony, who leads a force that includes abducted children, used an interview with Sudan’s The Referendum magazine to issue a rare public statement of his desire to “liberate” northern Uganda and rule according to the 10 Commandments.
Kony has long been blamed for using a bizarre blend of Christian symbolism and traditional “magic” to sway his child followers into massacring civilians and kidnapping girls for use as sex slaves, but he blamed the military for the killings.
“All the allegations are not true. Museveni killers are the ones doing ungodly practices,” Kony was quoted as telling the inaugural issue of The Referendum, a political monthly published by Nairobi-based southern Sudanese exiles.
Kony, who is seldom photographed and has talked to the press very rarely during his 18-year war, said he had defied pressure from the Sudanese authorities not to speak to the media to give the interview, conducted by one of his former guards.
“President Museveni cannot talk peace, he is (a) killer and he wanted to kill me by all means. I have asked the lords of the LRA to kill Museveni,” Kony said, referring to his commanders.
The remarks appeared to downplay hopes of a negotiated settlement to the rebellion which has ravaged northern Uganda for much of the past 18 years, despite calls from religious leaders and politicians for the government to open talks.
Believed to roam parts of northern Uganda and neighbouring southern Sudan with his band of followers, Kony said he would not speak to Museveni on the telephone for fear the army would use the call to locate his position.
“I will communicate with Museveni through the holy spirits and not through the telephone,” Kony was quoting as telling the Referendum during the interview, conducted in the southern Sudanese town of Juba on March 6.
A former altar boy who tells abducted children he can read their minds, Kony told his interviewer to refer to him as “Lord”, not by the “commander” title adopted by many rebels.
“I am Lord Joseph Kony, or refer to me as lordship. All liberators are lords not commanders,” he said.
“DREAMS OF THE SPIRIT”
Kony’s movement says it is fighting to liberate the Acholi tribe in northern Uganda from southern oppression, although Acholi villagers form the majority of its victims.
“Dreams of the spirit came to me one night and asked me to launch a lord’s resistance movement. I spent 60 days praying and appealing to God to strengthen my faith so that I could liberate the people of Uganda from corruption, sins and immoral thinking,” Kony said.
Uganda and Sudan had for years exchanged accusations of backing each other’s rebels until they struck a deal in March, 2002 allowing Ugandan forces to pursue the LRA into Sudan.
Sudan denies backing the LRA, but Kony admitted in the interview that he had visited a club for military officers in the Sudanese capital Khartoum as late as 2002.
Kony said that he would continue fighting even if moves towards peace between Sudan’s government and southern rebels made his position in Sudan more precarious, saying he had been invited by some “lords” to go to southern Ethiopia.
Asked to react to suspicions among some Sudanese observers that Egypt was backing the LRA to destabilise Uganda and foil Kampala’s ambitions to take a bigger share of the Nile waters, Kony declared the interview over.
“Stop here, please. I have not connections with Egypt and I want this issue closed.”