Uganda urges world for help

2007-10-02 13:37

New York - Uganda's foreign minister urged the international community on Monday to put pressure on leaders of the country's brutal 20-year insurgency to comply with peace agreements and set a deadline for negotiations to end.

Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa told world leaders at the United Nations ministerial meeting that the rebel Lord's Resistance Army had failed to meet requirements to which they had agreed since negotiations began last year, including gathering at neutral zone Ri-Kwangba just north of the Congo border to be monitored.

Kutesa said: "We urge the international community to bring adequate pressure to bear on the LRA to assemble at Ri-Kwangba and to put a time frame on the talks. Talks cannot go on forever."

Southern Sudan had been mediating talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government since July 2006. A truce had been signed, but the talks had not progressed much and had repeatedly stalled. Negotiations broke down in late December 2006 after the rebel movement walked out.

7m people to flee homes

Talks nonetheless were seen as the best chance to end the conflict that had spilled over to neighbouring regions in Congo and Sudan.

According to relief organisations, fighting since the insurgency began in 1986 had left thousands dead and forced 1.7 million people to flee their homes.

The LRA was made up of the remnants of a rebellion that began after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni took power that year. The rebels were notorious for cutting off the tongues and lips of civilians and abducting thousands of children, turning the girls into sex slaves and the boys into fighters.

The group's top five leaders had been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, but had repeatedly demanded immunity from prosecution in return for signing a peace deal.

Museveni's government had promised not to turn them over in return for an end to the bloodshed. Kutesa said his government would not condone impunity, and was "working closely with the ICC to ensure accountability".

Kutesa said: "As we inch toward a comprehensive peace agreement, international support and understanding is required to balance the need for durable peace and stability on one hand and the imperative for justice on the other."

- AP