Sudan deal expected to help bring peace to northern Uganda

KAMPALA, May 27 (AFP) — The Ugandan army said Thursday that accords signed by the Sudan government and the country’s main rebel group to help end a war in the south of Sudan should bring neighbouring northern Uganda closer to peace.

Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) late Wednesday signed three agreements on power-sharing and the administration of three disputed regions, paving the way for a comprehensive peace deal to end Africa’s longest-running war.

“This is a great step forward because peace in Sudan is peace in Uganda and vice versa,” Ugandan army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza told AFP by phone.

Uganda’s government has been fighting the rebel Lord’s Resistant Army (LRA) both in northern Uganda and in southern Sudan, where the group has bases.

In the past Kampala has accused the Khartoum government of supporting Ugandan insurgents, just as Sudan charged Kampala with backing the SPLM/A.

“Nobody was taking responsibility over the territory in southern Sudan where (LRA leader Joseph) Kony was hiding, but with these agreements, now we shall have one person accountable and that will be the (post-conflict) Sudanese government,” Bantariza explained.

“Kony will no longer have a safe haven in Sudan and we hope that this time the Sudanese government will be able to occupy areas deserted by LRA forces as we have demanded in the past,” Bantariza said.

The notoriously brutal LRA has been battling the government of President Yoweri Museveni since 1988 with the ostensible aim of replacing it with one based on the Bibical Ten Commandments.