Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has accused government troops of violating a truce in his first comments since the start of an agreement seen as a major breakthrough in ending his 20-year insurgency.
The military denied it and said it was ”religiously” observing the deal struck on Saturday that gives Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas three weeks to assemble at camps in south Sudan while talks continue in its capital Juba.
Negotiations were due to resume there on Thursday or Friday.
But in a satellite telephone call to a radio station in northern Uganda late on Wednesday, 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.
”When my forces from Pader [district] were heading to Kitgum to meet another group on how to move to the designated area to assemble, UPDF [Uganda People’s Defence Forces] attacked them,” Kony told Mega FM, based in Gulu town.
”What cessation of hostilities are they talking about?”
More than a dozen ”safe” corridors declared by the military for his rebels to walk to the Sudanese camp at Owiny-ki-Bul were too narrow, he said, and it was unfair of the government to order no southern movements at all.
”Most of my field commanders need to send messengers on foot to gather my soldiers under them, to assemble in one area before they begin to move,” Kony said.
Uganda’s army spokesperson rejected the LRA chief’s comments and denied there had been any new fighting.
”We did not attack his people at all. We are following the truce religiously,” said Major Felix Kulayigye.
This week’s moves towards peace have won noisy support in the north, where thousands of residents in Gulu — the epicentre of the conflict — danced their way to the army base on Wednesday waving white flags in celebration.
Nearly two million northerners have been uprooted by two decades of fighting between troops and LRA rebels notorious for killing civilians, mutilating survivors and forcing thousands of kidnapped children to serve in their ranks.
Kony is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), but the LRA says under the truce he will leave his main hideout in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Rebel officials in Juba said the location of a second assembly area near the DRC was still being discussed with the regional government, whose forces will be monitoring the camps.
Experts say the LRA seem keen to take up an amnesty offer from the government, as they are now cut off from years of support from Khartoum, which used them against its own rebels, and ringed by states obliged to arrest them for the ICC.
On Monday, the court — which has no police force of its own — said it still hoped they would be brought to justice. – Reuters