/ 7 September 2006

Ugandan rebels not yet at agreed camps

No Ugandan rebels have arrived yet at remote camps in south Sudan where they are supposed to assemble under the terms of a landmark truce that began last week, Ugandan negotiators said on Thursday.

According to the deal that came into effect on August 29, Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) fighters were given three weeks to gather at the two locations while talks continue in the southern capital of Sudan, Juba, to end their 20-year insurrection.

But the cult-like group’s deputy chief Vincent Otti cast doubt over any movement earlier this week when he said his forces would remain hidden until the International Criminal Court (ICC) revoked its arrest warrants for LRA leaders.

”No member of the LRA is at the assembly points, especially those in Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC], who have shown no signs of moving,” said Captain Paddy Ankunda, spokesperson for the Ugandan delegation at the talks.

”Neither have they appointed officers to the cessation-of-hostilities monitoring team … It looks like inconsistency.”

The top LRA rebels, including Otti and his boss Joseph Kony, are wanted for war crimes by ICC prosecutors, who accuse them of massacring and mutilating civilians, and abducting thousands of children to serve as fighters and sex slaves.

The violence has uprooted nearly two million people in northern Uganda and destabilised parts of southern Sudan.

Substantial talks that had been due to resume in Juba this week were delayed after LRA representatives asked mediators to help them visit their leaders in eastern DRC, Ankunda said.

Mediators were not immediately available for comment.

Sticking point

The government has offered the LRA amnesty if the talks succeed, but says it will only push the ICC to drop its investigation after the rebels quit the bush.

An ICC spokesperson at The Hague said the court had no response to Otti’s remarks, frustrating some critics who see its indictments as the biggest obstacle to ending the war.

”How can they have no comment? This is one of the most important moments in Ugandan history,” Erin Baines, a University of British Columbia researcher on traditional reconciliation systems in northern Uganda, said.

”They call themselves a ‘victim’s court’ and yet the victims appear to feel quite different from them,” she said.

Analysts say the ICC is faced with a tough dilemma — to engineer the capture of the LRA indictees and possibly put at risk talks to end one of Africa’s longest wars, or abandon its founding principle of no immunity for the worst crimes.

With no police to catch its targets, it is counting on Ugandan, Sudanese and former rebel southern Sudanese troops to bring the LRA rebels to justice.

”The mediators know this,” said Sudan analyst David Mozersky. ”Total amnesty is unacceptable to the ICC, but its warrants look to be the main sticking point for the rebels.” — Reuters