Uganda’s fugitive rebel, Joseph Kony, has broken months of silence to call for the resumption of peace talks that collapsed in April and prompted three nations to threaten a joint attack on his forces.
Kony, who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, made the rare comments in a phone call broadcast late on Sunday by Radio France International.
”I want the peace talks to be resumed in Juba. I want to go back to [the] table again … I don’t want to fight again because talk can end everything,” he said.
”There is going to be peace though negotiations and my message to the people of Uganda is that … I am the one who started the peace talks, so I am not going to refuse anything. I am going to struggle to make sure that this war is solved.”
South Sudan hosted two years of talks in its capital, Juba, between the Ugandan government and representatives of Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
But the negotiations broke down in April after Kony failed to appear on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)-Sudan border to sign a final peace deal.
Earlier this month, the rebels attacked south Sudanese forces in the area, killing 30 people including 14 soldiers.
Uganda’s two-decade civil war uprooted two million people and also destabilised neighbouring parts of oil-producing southern Sudan and mineral-rich eastern DRC.
South Sudan Vice-President Riek Machar, who chaired the Juba talks, has said he is not giving up on the negotiations. He has also warned that preparations by Kampala, Khartoum and Kinshasa for a joint offensive against the LRA were premature.
Kony, who is believed to be camped in north-eastern DRC’s lawless Garamba Forest, said he was ready to meet Machar again.
”I am going to talk to him. He is our mediator,” Kony said.
”I am going to meet with him in Ri-Kwangba [on the Sudan-DRC border] to end everything.” — Reuters