Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebels will resume an offensive against the government unless Kampala agrees to move faltering peace talks to a new venue outside south Sudan, the LRA’s deputy commander said on Tuesday.
”If they cannot find another venue, then I will go back to my country and start war,” LRA deputy commander Vincent Otti told Reuters by phone from his bush hideout on the Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo border. ”We are ready to invade Uganda.”
Otti declined to say when this would happen.
When asked whether the rebels would attack Ugandan army positions, he said: ”Yes, we will.”
”[President Yoweri] Museveni is refusing this [relocation of the talks] purposefully so what else is left but to go back to war,” he said.
The Ugandan rebels, fighting for two decades, have said they would not return to talks in south Sudan’s capital Juba after Sudan’s president vowed to ”get rid of the LRA from Sudan”.
The rebels, among Africa’s most feared insurgents, say they are worried for the security of their fighters, who are meant to gather in two camps in south Sudan as part of a landmark truce signed in August.
They have suggested Kenya and South Africa as alternative venues but Nairobi has said it will not host the talks.
The Ugandan army was not immediately available for comment. – Reuters