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'Remove LRA from terrorist list'
12/09/2007 14:40 - (SA)
Nairobi - A Ugandan rebel group urged the United States administration on Wednesday to drop them from the list of terrorist groups to help Uganda gain an elusive peace.
The spokesperson for the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) Godfrey Ayoo said: "If the US wants to help in the ongoing peace process, it has to remove us from the list of terror groups as a goodwill gesture."
"They should join other countries like Germany, Britain, Denmark and Austria and support the peace process. They should learn from others."
The US added LRA to its terror list shortly after the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington.
The LRA, which had been fighting in northern Uganda for 20 years, was made up of the remnants of a rebellion that began after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni took power in 1986.
Govt, rebels sign truce
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. They claimed they wanted to rule Uganda according to Christianity's 10 commandments.
The Southern Sudanese government had been mediating talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government since July. A truce was signed last year, but talks had repeatedly stalled.
The International Criminal Court had issued arrest warrants for the top five leaders of the LRA for war crimes, but Museveni's government had promised not to turn them over if they signed a peace deal.
Ayoo, who was addressing journalists in the capital of neighbouring Kenya, Nairobi, reaffirmed his group's commitment to peace as long as dialogue was the way to solving his country's conflict. He accused Uganda's government of trying to use military means to disarm his group.
Ayoo said: "We are talking because we have seen there is also possible to obtain the same thing that we were trying to get through military means and negotiations.
"So long as cessation of hostilities will hold we will not resume fighting in Uganda."
The US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, said in Arusha, Tanzania, last week that the US would support regional efforts to apprehend LRA rebels if peace negotiations failed, which she described as "their only way out".
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