It was meant to be a day of celebration and festivities, marking the end of one of Africa’s longest and most brutal wars. In the end, amid allegations of stolen wads of cash, after an undelivered letter from a president to the rebels and the sacking of the main negotiator, it collapsed into farce.
The signing of a Ugandan deal to end 20 years of war was postponed in chaos on Friday as government delegates quit, the rebel negotiator resigned and fugitive Joseph Kony failed to show. The planned ceremony on the remote Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo border seemed delayed for at least days.
Ugandan government officials quit peace talks on Friday after fugitive rebel leader Joseph Kony delayed signing a final deal, casting doubt over the fate of nearly two years of tortuous negotiations. The draft deal with Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army had been due to be signed on Thursday.
Elders from northern Uganda tried to meet fugitive rebel leader Joseph Kony on Friday to salvage long-running peace talks after he delayed signing a deal to end one of Africa’s longest wars. The draft agreement between Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army and the government appeared to be near collapse.
Uganda’s top rebel leader, Joseph Kony, was expected to sign an historic peace deal on Thursday to end one of Africa’s longest and most brutal civil conflicts. The Lord’s Resistance Army chief was due in the southern Sudan jungle town of Ri-Kwangba to initial an agreement that is to be signed separately by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni four days later.
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/ 13 November 2006
United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland held a dramatic jungle meeting with the leader of the rebel Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army on Sunday but failed to secure the release of women and children. Joseph Kony, an elusive self-proclaimed mystic, emerged with an entourage of heavily armed young men from dense forest on the border between Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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/ 20 September 2006
The deputy commander of Uganda’s notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels said on Wednesday the group was serious about peace talks but wanted international warrants scrapped to aid. Vincent Otti first told reporters that lifting the International Criminal Court indictments on top LRA leaders was a pre-condition to peace, but then suggested a deal could in fact be signed before that.
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/ 19 September 2006
The two top leaders of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebels have missed a Tuesday deadline to gather at an assembly point on the Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo border as part of a truce, mediators said. ”They have missed the deadline,” said the head of an independent truce monitoring team, Major General Wilson Deng Kuoirot.