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/ 1 September 2006

Uganda truce spurs plan to resettle camp dwellers

Uganda’s government prepared to deliver to a -million recovery plan to leaders of the war-ravaged north on Friday as peace talks raised hopes of an end to one of Africa’s longest insurgencies. About 1,7-million northerners are living in squalid camps having fled from two-decades of conflict between the military and cult-like rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army.

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/ 31 August 2006

LRA leader Kony accuses army of breaking truce

Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has accused government troops of violating a truce in his first comments since the start of an agreement seen as a major breakthrough in ending his 20-year insurgency. The military denied it and said it was ”religiously” observing the deal struck on Saturday that gives Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army guerrillas three weeks to assemble at camps in south Sudan.

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/ 30 August 2006

Uganda: Safe routes for rebels not finalised

Uganda’s army by Wednesday had not chosen the safe routes northern rebels are supposed to take from the bush to camps in southern Sudan as part of a truce that may mark the end of one of Africa’s longest wars. The delay in announcing the routes should not deter Lord’s Resistance Army guerrillas in the north from setting off on foot, a government spokesperson said.

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/ 28 August 2006

Ugandan rebels order fighters to prepare for truce

Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army on Monday ordered its forces to prepare for an imminent truce with the government under which they will move to neutral camps in southern Sudan. In recorded government-authorised messages broadcast over radio stations in war-ravaged northern Uganda, LRA commanders called on their fighters to come out of the bush.

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/ 9 August 2006

Uganda kills LRA rebels as peace talks stutter

The Ugandan army announced on Wednesday it had killed at least eight Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in the past week despite peace talks aimed at ending nearly 19 years of insurgency in the region. Army spokesperson Lieutenant Chris Magezi said the rebel fighters were slain during ambushes in the war-ravaged northern Gulu, Pader and Amur districts.

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/ 31 July 2006

Thirty die in Ugandan fuel-tanker crash

Thirty people were killed and four others seriously injured when a passenger minibus collided with a fuel tanker in central Uganda, police said on Monday. Police said 27 people on the bus died instantly, while three others suffocated as they scooped fuel that spilled from the Rwanda-bound tanker after the accident on Sunday.

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/ 31 July 2006

Ugandan officials meet elusive rebel chief

Ugandan government officials met overnight with the elusive Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony ahead of the resumption of peace talks aimed at ending a 19-year-old insurgency, officials said on Monday. The spokesperson for the Ugandan delegation said Walter Ochora, a district commissioner for northern Uganda’s Gulu District, met the rebel supremo in Nabanga.

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/ 23 July 2006

Uganda ‘may attack rebels in DRC’ if talks fail

Uganda said on Sunday it might still attack Lord’s Resistance Army rebels camped in the Democratic Republic of Congo if peace talks hosted by neighbouring southern Sudan fail to end fighting in one of Africa’s longest wars. Kinshasa and the United Nations have refused repeated requests from Uganda to be allowed to send its troops into the DRC to hunt down the rebels themselves.

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/ 20 July 2006

Uganda approves family visit for LRA rebels

Uganda said on Thursday it will organise a trip next week for relatives of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, including LRA supremo Joseph Kony’s mother, to visit their kin at a jungle hideout. ”This is a confidence-building measure,” Ugandan delegation spokesperson Paddy Ankunda said from the southern Sudanese capital of Juba.

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/ 12 July 2006

ICC urged to quash war-crimes indictments

A senior Ugandan official on Wednesday urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to quash its war-crimes indictments against the leaders of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, in a bid to encourage the rebels into peace talks with the government in Kampala. The peace talks had been due to start in southern Sudan on Wednesday.

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/ 10 July 2006

Uganda extends deadline for rebel peace talks

Uganda added more than a month to a deadline for thrashing out a peace deal with northern rebels on Monday, boosting landmark talks this week that will aim to end one of Africa’s most neglected wars. Tentative discussions between Ugandan officials and representatives of the Lord’s Resistance Army are due to begin on Wednesday in Juba, in neighbouring southern Sudan.

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/ 4 July 2006

Uganda may pardon rebel leaders if they disarm

Uganda will enter talks with leaders of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army guerrillas without preconditions if they give up arms and denounce war, a government spokesperson said on Tuesday. The government will also be willing to pardon rebel commander Joseph Kony and his four commanders who are wanted for trial by the United Nation’s International Criminal Court.

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/ 1 June 2006

Uganda meets UN Aids target

Uganda is among six African countries that have met the 2001 United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/Aids and reduced HIV prevalence among young people by 25%, according to the 2006 report on the global Aids epidemic by the United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/Aids.

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/ 25 May 2006

Ugandan troops kill gunman after deadly rampage

Ugandan troops have killed a gunman who shot dead at least 10 civilians this week in a bloody rampage at a camp for war-displaced people in northern Uganda, the military said on Thursday. Soldiers had been looking for the man, a militia member responsible for guarding the Ogwete camp for internally displaced people, since he fled the area after Monday’s killing spree.

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/ 17 May 2006

Uganda sets deadline for rebels to open peace talks

Uganda on Wednesday set a July deadline for the leader of the notorious rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to end a nearly two-decade insurgency and agree to peace talks or face military destruction. President Yoweri Museveni said his government would assure the safety of LRA supremo Joseph Kony and four lieutenants indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

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/ 12 May 2006

Uganda’s Museveni sworn in for third term

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni took his third oath of office on Friday, formally extending his 21-year rule in an inauguration ceremony held amid concerns about his commitment to democracy. Museveni, who first came to power in a 1986 coup but has been elected three times since, enters his third term facing a series of weighty challenges.

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/ 27 April 2006

Last goodbye to Uganda’s ‘Big Mama’

Wildlife authorities said on Wednesday they had been forced to euthanise ”Big Mama”, a giant 52-year-old Nile crocodile that had been a star attraction at a Ugandan zoo for nearly half a century. Keepers at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre in Entebbe, south of the capital, put down the ailing reptile at the weekend.

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/ 13 April 2006

Misery thrives in Uganda’s camps

As the sun dips behind the evening clouds, staining the equatorial sky a brilliant orange, seven-year-old Josephine Atim pounds away at rocks with an aging and worn hammer. ”I am breaking these stones to make some money,” she whispers shyly, pausing briefly as dozens of other youngsters continue to smash stones into pebbles to earn a meagre wage.

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/ 12 April 2006

Defence: Ugandan witness had hidden earpiece

In a bizarre twist to the treason trial of Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye, the defence on Wednesday accused the government of coaching the lead prosecution witness with a hidden radio set. Defence lawyer Caleb Alaka stunned a packed courtroom by claiming that the testimony of the witness, Jennifer Aryemo, was being directed by unidentified government agents through an earpiece concealed in an elaborate disguise.

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/ 4 April 2006

Sex scandal adds twist to Rwanda-Uganda rivalry

Longstanding rivalry between Rwanda and Uganda took a new twist on Monday after Ugandan security forces photographed and arrested a Rwandan diplomat naked in bed with the wife of a Ugandan businessman. The incident involves John Ngarambe, the first secretary at Rwanda’s embassy in Kampala, who was detained along with the woman late on Saturday at an upscale hotel near Lake Victoria.

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/ 30 March 2006

Violent-death rate in Uganda higher than Iraq

The rate of violent deaths in war-ravaged Northern Uganda is three times higher than in Iraq, and the East African country’s 20-year insurgency has cost ,7-billion, according to a report released on Thursday. There are now about 146 deaths a week among Northern Uganda’s estimated population of five million, or 0,17 violent deaths per 10 000 people per day.

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/ 15 March 2006

Uganda shuts radio station over critical talk show

The Ugandan authorities have shut down a radio station that allegedly aired a talk show critical of the country’s military and ruling party, media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Wednesday. The New York-based CPJ said police shut Choice FM based in the northern town of Gulu on Monday after it aired the show in which an opposition politician criticised local civilian and military authorities for alleged corruption.