UGANDA: Ugandan Government welcomes ceasefire truce called for by LRA but wants it on the final peace deal

Uganda said on Wednesday (August 2) it welcomed a truce call by elusive Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony, but stressed that it would only sign a ceasefire as part of a final peace agreement. On Tuesday the rebel commander, wanted on an international arrest warrant, used the first news conference of his two-decade insurgency to call for an immediate cessation of hostilities, saying no meaningful negotiations could take place without one. "At this point in time government has take the position that ceasefire should come as part of a comprehensive settlement because in the past ceasefire has been used as an opportunity to.. it has been actually abused to retrain, regroup, reorganise, dig up ammunitions hidden in various places and resume fighting." said government spokesman Robert Kabushenga. At talks with LRA representatives that began in south Sudan on July 14, the Ugandan government offered amnesty and protection from arrest if the rebels surrendered. But it has accused the LRA of using ceasefires in the past to re-arm. The government wants Kony or his deputy to attend the talks in person. But both men are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and have so far stayed away. According to Kabushenga, they should also be confined to one location. "One they have got to assemble in one place which can be monitored by a force, we don't want a ceasefire where they can move freely, preferably that location should be in Uganda and they should accept that they will be fed from wherever their location is," added the spokesman. The cult-like LRA is accused of killing civilians and mutilating its victims in a war against the Ugandan government that has uprooted nearly 2 million people and killed tens of thousands, as well as destabilising southern Sudan. But mediators saw Kony's attendance at talks in a forest clearing on the remote Sudan-Congo border as a boost to the talks, which resume in the southern capital Juba on Monday. South Sudan's Vice President Riek Machar has led more than 100 elders, religious leaders and relatives of the rebels to the meetings, held just inside the Democratic Republic of Congo. At his press conference, Kony called for a truce and denied committing atrocities in northern Uganda and southern Sudan. "Those words people say to me, that is propaganda because they spoil my name like that ... so that people do not love me as a human being," he told reporters in halting English. Asked whether he would ever stand trial at the ICC, he said: "No, no, no... because I did not do anything."

ITN Source | August 3, 2006

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