UGANDA: Truce starts to hold as Uganda military leave the bush and return to their barracks

A truce between the Ugandan army and northern guerrillas notorious for their savagery and use of child soldiers has started to hold. Under the pact signed on Saturday (August 26), fugitive Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have three weeks to assemble at two camps in southern Sudan while negotiations continue in Juba to end their two-decade insurrection. The truce is seen as a major breakthrough in ending Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony's 20-year insurgency. Hundreds of soldiers from the Ugandan army walked from the bush in a single line signifying that all was well and the truce is being respected. Late on Wednesday (August 30) Kony accused government troops of violating the truce in his first comments since the start of the agreement. In a satellite telephone call to a radio station, Kony protested against safe routes chosen by the military for his fighters to trek across the border and accused the army of already breaking the truce. The military has denied this and says it is "religiously" observing the deal. "He can not reject the safe corridors because the agreement requires UPDF to give those safe passage corridors. Secondly or thirdly we are confident, we are interested in this war ending peacefully, so we have no reason to go to Juba for negotiation come to implementation and do otherwise, we have no reason," said army spokesman major Felix Kulayigye. Uganda's army has still not named up to a dozen safe routes the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels are supposed to take to camps in south Sudan as part of Saturday's truce deal. Nearly two million people have been uprooted in northern Uganda by fighting between troops and the LRA, which won notoriety for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and forcing thousands of abducted children to serve in its ranks. The LRA's top leaders, including Joseph Kony and his deputy Vincent Otti, are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), and have stayed hidden in Congo. LRA officials have insisted both men will move to the Sudan camps within the three-week deadline. If the talks collapse, Saturday's truce lets the rebels leave the assembly areas peacefully, but diplomats say that is unlikely to happen -- especially if the wanted men are present.

ITN Source | August 31, 2006

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