Uganda’s government prepared to deliver to a $340-million recovery plan to leaders of the war-ravaged north on Friday as peace talks raised hopes of an end to one of Africa’s longest insurgencies.
About 1,7-million northerners are living in squalid camps having fled from two-decades of conflict between the military and cult-like rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
Hopes of returning home have been raised by a truce reached on Saturday at talks in neighbouring southern Sudan.
Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi said the first $10-million of the recovery plan would be spent urgently on resettlement kits, including farm tools and seeds, on re-opening remote roads in the north and on hiring more police officers.
”The government has taken immediate steps to resettle the internally-displaced people since there is a chance for total peace,” he said late on Thursday.
Nsibambi said the finished ”National Peace, Recovery and Development Plan for Northern Uganda, 2006/2009” would be sent to northern leaders for input over the next two weeks.
”Cabinet will then consider it for approval,” he said.
Uganda’s military has denied rebel claims it has violated the truce, which began on Tuesday. Under the deal, the LRA have three weeks to assemble at two locations in southern Sudan. Talks are due to resume in its capital Juba on Monday.
Almost everyone in the worst-affected northern Ugandan districts has been uprooted by fighting between troops and LRA rebels notorious for killing civilians, mutilating survivors and kidnapping thousands of children.
LRA leader Joseph 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 eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. – Reuters