Northern Uganda leaders welcome Sudanese peace deal

KAMPALA, Uganda, Jan 12, 2005 (PANA) — War weary Ugandans have expressed hope that the peace deal reached in Kenya on Sunday between the Sudanese government and rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) to end two decades of a brutal war would also facilitate an end to their own 19-year bloody insurgency in the country’s north.

Sudan’s Vice President Ali Osman Taha and SPLM/A leader John
Garang signed the peace agreement last Sunday to formally end
Africa’s longest running civil war.

World leaders and statesmen witnessed the historic event held in
Nairobi’s Nyayo National Stadium, which northern Ugandans and
Sudanese refugees living there followed closely on radio
broadcasts.

In interviews, political authorities, civic leaders and religious
leaders told PANA that peace and effective governance in southern
Sudan would facilitate an end to the war waged by the rebels of
southern Sudan-based Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) against
Kampala.

“It (the peace deal) facilitates the peace initiatives aimed at
ending the war in northern Uganda. The LRA will have been using
southern Sudan as rear bases due to lack of effective governance
there.

“With effective governance, it will erase the duo-suspicion and
tension between Kampala and Khartoum resulting in supporting each
other’s rebel groups,” Andrew Laboke, a cultural leader, said.

The Anglican bishop of northern Gulu diocese, Onono Onweng, said
the deal was “a God given agreement. The Sudanese will not
tolerate any nonsense on their territory this time and this means
peace here.”

Northern Uganda hosts over 160 camps of internally displaced
people (IDP) fleeing brutal attacks by the LRA rebels. Official
figures by aid agencies estimated that the country’s IDP
population as a result of the war was over 1.6 million people.

“This is a great moment we have been waiting for. If the
agreement is adhered to by both parties, then it will have
tremendous impact on peace in northern Uganda,” said Lieutenant
Colonel Walter Ochola, the head of Gulu District Council.

The LRA war is characterised by brutality against civilians and
abduction of children to serve the rebels as fighters or sex
slaves.

“We shall have somebody to cooperate with immediately, unlike in
the past when Khartoum used to say that they were not in total
control of the region and the SPLM/A would tell us that it was
not a government,” army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza said.