Uganda’s top negotiator in peace talks with the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting that the government will ask the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) to drop arrest warrants against the rebels’ top commanders only after the LRA renounces its insurgency.
Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, who also is Uganda’s interior minister, said the LRA must disarm, demobilise, deal seriously with issues of impunity from war crimes and sign a final peace deal before there is any approach from the Kampala government to the court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to drop charges.
“There shall be no blanket amnesty to the indicted LRA commanders,” Rugunda said. “The LRA commanders have to undergo accountability. The accountability will be done in accordance with both Uganda’s formal national laws and with traditional [ethnic] policies that have been used to resolve conflicts.
“When the final peace agreement is signed, the rebels have disarmed and demobilised, and the issues of impunity have been dealt with, then the government of Uganda will engage the ICC to review indictments.”
In July 2005 the ICC indicted LRA leader Joseph Kony, his deputy, Vincent Otti, and top commanders Dominic Ogwen, Okot Odiambo and Raska Lukwiya for war crimes and crimes against humanity. They face 33 separate charges on counts that include murder, rape, sexual enslavement, mutilation, massive killing of civilians, abduction and recruitment of children to fight as guerrilla soldiers. Lukwiya has since been killed in battle in northern Uganda.
Dr Stephen Kagoda, the top public servant in the interior ministry and a member of Rugunda’s negotiating team, described the ICC as an ally of the Ugandan government because the warrants it had issued for the arrest of Kony and his top commanders had forced the LRA to the peace talks in Juba, the capital of semi-autonomous South Sudan.
The government and the LRA are engaged in on-off peace talks that began in July last year. The negotiations are mediated by South Sudan’s Vice-ÂPresident Riek Machar and overseen by the United Nations special envoy to northern Uganda, former Mozambique president Joachim Chissano.
The talks are aimed at ending the two-decade insurgency in the north that has left more than 1,7-million people displaced, about 100 000 killed and nearly 80 000 abducted, 38 000 of them children under the age of 15.
Rugunda said he and the Ugandan government supported the ICC’s philosophy that there can be no impunity for those who have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes. He said Uganda would use domestic laws, consistent with international laws, “to ensure the issue of impunity is addressed”.
The Institute for War and Peace Reporting was unable to get comment from Otti. In a recent interview, however, Otti told the institute by satellite phone that even if a final peace deal is reached in Juba, the LRA fighters will remain in the bush unless the ICC indictments and warrants of arrest are scrapped.
Speaking from the rebels’ main base in the Garamba National Park, in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Otti said: “The ICC remains a big stumbling block to peace in Uganda. If the ICC indictments are not lifted, we shall not come out. It’s simple. No.”
ICC officials in The Hague argue that the fledgling court’s arrest warrants have contributed to a reduction in the number of LRA attacks and have forced the rebels to negotiate.
Moreno-Ocampo has said consistently that the ICC’s arrest warrants will not be lifted unless there is a successful legal challenge from the Ugandan government or the LRA to the ICC’s judges or the UN Security Council.
Samuel Okiror Egadu is an Institute for War and Peace Reporting journalist in Uganda