Uganda rebels ready for talks
2005-11-30 12:49
Kampala - The deputy chief of Uganda's notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) said on Wednesday the rebels are ready for peace talks with the government, breaking the hardline group's penchant for secrecy.
Vincent Otti, the number two of elusive LRA leader Joseph Kony, said the guerrilla army was now willing to negotiate an end to the brutal nearly 20-year war it has waged in northern Uganda.
In a surprise satellite telephone call to the BBC, Otti - one of five top LRA leaders to have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity - was prepared to be tried for alleged atrocities.
"I am Lieutenant-General Vincent Otti and want this talk with the government of Uganda to end the rebellion, because now we fought for 20 years, we are ready for this talk from today," he told the BBC.
Thousands have been killed
Otti said Kony had authorised the appeal and urged Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's government to respond to the call.
Fledgling peace talks with the LRA broke down late last year and Museveni responded by stepping up military operations against the rebels who have earned worldwide revulsion for their brutal behavior.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and up to two million displaced in northern Uganda since the LRA took leadership of a regional rebellion against Kampala in 1988.
The rebels have claimed to be fighting to replace Museveni's government with one based on the Biblical Ten Commandmants but are accused of massive abuses in the region including the abductions of at least 20 000 children who are used as porters, fighters and sex slaves for LRA commanders.
In October, the Hague-based ICC, the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, said it had issued arrest warrants for Kony, Otti and three other LRA commanders.
The ICC said the LRA had "established a pattern of brutalisation of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilations, as well as mass burnings of houses and looting of camp settlements."
The group has come under growing pressure in recent weeks after the ICC indictments and amid growing cooperation between Kampala and Khartoum, which has extended the are on which Ugandan troops can pursue LRA rebels inside southern Sudan.