The Ugandan government has approved the clearance of thousands of hectares of protected rainforest for a sugar plantation, a state newspaper said on Wednesday. The government is set to seek Parliament’s permission to clear about 7 000ha of 30 000ha in Mabira Forest Reserve, east of Kampala.
Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army rebels said on Friday they would return to peace talks in south Sudan if the government there increased security to keep the Ugandan army from attacking them. The rebels quit talks with Uganda in the south Sudanese capital, Juba, in January, denting hopes for an end to two decades of bloodshed in northern Uganda.
Stalled peace talks to end a brutal 20-year insurgency by the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army are to resume, government officials said on Tuesday. ”Both parties have agreed to resume talks,” Ruhakana Rugunda, head of the government negotiating team and Minister of Internal Affairs, told journalists.
Scientists have called for the international community take more interest in sleeping sickness, according to a report on the Science and Development Network website. They warn that drugs currently used to treat the disease are old and toxic, adding that sleeping sickness warrants a higher research priority because of its threat to health.
Ugandan government troops on Thursday scouted the volatile north of the country after the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army refused to renew a ceasefire that ran out at midnight local time. ”The situation is calm, we have not heard of any incident,” said army spokesperson Lieutenant Chris Magezi.
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/ 28 February 2007
The Ugandan government and northern rebels on Wednesday traded barbs ahead of a midnight truce expiry, raising fears of fresh clashes that could wipe out a stalled peace process to end two decades of war. The rebel Lord’s Resistance Army vowed not to renew the truce and to counter any army raids.
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/ 28 February 2007
Lord’s Resistance Army rebels will not renew a truce with the Ugandan government set to expire on Wednesday, raising fears of a new chapter in the brutal 20-year war in northern Uganda. They have refused to resume talks unless another venue outside Sudan is found, a request Kampala rejects as a time-wasting tactic.
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/ 27 February 2007
More than half the children in refugee camps in Africa’s troubled Great Lakes region have been victims of some form of sexual abuse, a report by aid agency World Vision said on Monday. Some of them are forced to have sex just to get food because conditions in the camps are so wretched, the charity said.
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/ 23 February 2007
The Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) on Friday said it would not renew a truce with the government due to expire next week in a blow to a stalled peace process aimed at ending two decades of war. LRA deputy commander Vincent Otti blamed Kampala for violating the truce that was the only significant achievement of peace talks that began last July.
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/ 22 February 2007
Just days before Hollywood’s elite gathers for this year’s Oscars, Ugandans hailed best actor nominee Forest Whitaker’s portrayal of Idi Amin — though were quick to frown on the sympathetic portrait of the former dictator. Whitaker is seen by many as the front-runner for the best actor Oscar for his role in The Last King of Scotland.
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/ 19 February 2007
An earthquake with a magnitude of 5,7 struck the Lake Albert region of western Uganda and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Monday, officials said, but there was no immediate word of casualties or damage. ”An earthquake passed here but it did not hurt anyone or destroy any property,” Andrew Diboi, police chief for western Uganda, told Reuters by telephone.
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/ 14 February 2007
Drought cycles are coming more often to north-eastern Uganda: every two years instead of every five. Residents could cope, if it wasn’t for the bandits. Lina Lomongin used to have 10 cows to her name and could feed herself and her four children on their milk and blood.
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/ 6 February 2007
Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels will resume an offensive against the government unless Kampala agrees to move faltering peace talks to a new venue outside south Sudan. The Ugandan rebels have said they would not return to talks in Juba after Sudan’s president vowed to ”get rid of the LRA from Sudan”.
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/ 4 February 2007
Alice Lakwena, a Ugandan warrior priestess who led an ill-fated insurgency to topple President Yoweri Museveni in the 1980s, was laid to rest on Saturday at a funeral attended by several hundred followers. An enigmatic leader, Lakwena inspired her poorly equipped troops with claims that spirits spoke through her.
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/ 19 January 2007
Uganda’s ruling party has approved a plan to send peacekeeping troops to Somalia, officials said on Friday, making the deployment almost certain to go ahead. President Yoweri Museveni has pledged 1Â 000 troops to a proposed 8Â 000-strong peacekeeping force under a United Nations-approved plan.
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/ 17 January 2007
Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have rejected south Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar as chief mediator at talks to end one of Africa’s longest wars. LRA second-in-command Vincent Otti said the rebels would permanently abandon talks with Uganda’s government in Juba if an alternative venue cannot be found.
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/ 15 January 2007
Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels said on Monday they want to leave assembly areas in south Sudan agreed under a truce and head back to Uganda in a move the army warned would restart the country’s 20-year war. ”We are unwelcome in Sudan so [we] have to go back to Uganda,” LRA spokesperson Obonyo Olweny said.
Improved security in war-ravaged northern Uganda following peace talks between the government and rebels allowed 230Â 000 internal refugees to go home in 2006, the United Nations World Food Programme said on Friday. Talks are set to resume in south Sudan this month after the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels agreed to extend a landmark ceasefire with the government in December.
Uganda is unwilling to contribute to a peacekeeping mission for Somalia unless its mission and an exit strategy are clearly defined, a government official said on Tuesday. After routing rival Islamist leaders from their Mogadishu stronghold with military backing from Ethiopia, Somalia’s interim government now faces the huge task of trying to secure the gun-infested capital.
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/ 27 November 2006
Standard Bank on Monday floated 20% of shares in its Ugandan affiliate in the country’s largest initial public offering to private investors. Spokesperson Daniel Nsibambi said 1,02-billion shares in Stanbic Ugandan were being offered on the Uganda Securities Exchange in a move expected to raise 71-billion Ugandan shillings (R278-million).
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/ 22 November 2006
Destruction of wetlands around Lake Victoria, a source of drinking water to millions, is fast removing a buffer that stops it being poisoned by sewage and industrial waste, a Ugandan wetlands expert said on Wednesday. ”The worst case scenario is the lake is going to die, even with its huge size,” said Paul Mafabi, head of the government’s wetlands programme.
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/ 16 November 2006
In 2003, Corporal James Omedio and Private Abdullah Muhammad stood before a public firing squad in Uganda for killing Irish Catholic priest Declan O’Toole; his driver, Patrick Longoli; and his cook, Fidel Longole. They were executed after they were found guilty by a field court martial, following a trial that lasted two hours and 36 minutes.
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/ 14 November 2006
United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland appealed to Uganda’s government and Lord’s Resistance Army rebels on Tuesday not to let a fragile peace process fail and to end civilian suffering caused by 20 years of war. Both sides signed a new truce this month, raising hopes for an end to the brutal war in northern Uganda that has killed tens of thousands.
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/ 6 November 2006
The Ugandan army said on Monday it had killed 12 people in weekend bombing raids against tribal warriors accused of shooting at a military helicopter over the country’s restive north-east Karamoja region. But sources in the area said the death toll was much higher and spoke of residents reporting as many as 500 people killed.
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/ 13 October 2006
Ugandan rebels have violated a truce with the government by leaving an agreed assembly point, the head of an independent monitoring team said on Friday, in a blow to efforts to end one of Africa’s longest conflicts. ”We did not find them there … Because they were supposed to be there, it is automatically a violation,” Major General Wilson Deng Kuoirot told the media.
Nursing her infant on a dusty pavement outside her printing shop in war-weary Gulu, Mary Amito says she isn’t convinced the recent talk of peace for northern Uganda will mean the end of 20 years of war. ”It’s going to start all over again,” she said, casting her eyes at a pile of stagnant rubbish gathering in a pothole.
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/ 14 September 2006
In 1999, an HIV-infected 30-year-old man named Fred Mwanga shocked the country when he raped a three-month-old baby in a Kampala suburb. Even more upsetting, Mwanga’s action was not an isolated incident. The rate of HIV-infected adults sexually abusing the nation’s most vulnerable citizens is rising. As these ill men prey on the minors, they spread the deadly HIV virus.
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/ 12 September 2006
Uganda on Tuesday extended a September 12 deadline for the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army to agree to a peace deal or lose an amnesty offer for war-crimes charges its leaders face. Just hours before its expiration, Kampala said it would fix a new deadline — yet to be announce.
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/ 7 September 2006
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 fighters were given three weeks to gather at the two locations.
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/ 6 September 2006
Ugandan rebels hidden in the Democratic Republic of Congo will not surrender unless the International Criminal Court (ICC) scraps arrest warrants for them, the deputy commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) said late on Tuesday. Vincent Otti said his fighters would stay in the bush as long as the warrants stayed in place.
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/ 5 September 2006
Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) on Tuesday decried a government move to bring mutilated war victims to peace talks in southern Sudan, suggesting it is a propaganda stunt. LRA spokesperson Obonyo Olweny said there is no point in having disfigured people at the peace talks in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba.
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/ 4 September 2006
Bands of Lord’s Resistance Army rebels trekked out of hideouts in northern Uganda on Monday, officials said, raising hopes that a landmark truce could signal an end to years of devastating war. They said several hundred fighters, including top field commanders, were moving in groups and had requested government help.