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UGANDA:
LRA rebels ready to talk peace - Joseph Kony
The insurgent Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is ready to engage the Ugandan government in talks to end two decades of fighting that has killed thousands and displaced close to two million people in the country's north, rebel leader Joseph Kony has said.
Rare video footage seen by IRIN shows Kony addressing a delegation of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) headed by south Sudan's vice president, Riek Machar. "The LRA is ready to talk peace
and end the war in a good way, not by force. We are fighting for peace and I am not a terrorist," Kony said during the 2 May meeting.
The LRA commander-in-chief said he was ready to talk peace with the Ugandan government and had "no problem" with President Yoweri Museveni. He also said he accepted an offer of mediation extended by Machar. South Sudan – where the LRA operates from - is now run by the SPLM/A, which signed a peace deal with the Khartoum-based Sudanese government in January 2005. At the end of the meeting, Machar is seen handing over food aid and what he says is US $20,000 in cash to Kony as part of an agreement for the rebels to halt attacks in southern Sudan, but warns him not to spend it on arms.
Sources said the video, which contains the first images of Kony to have appeared in years, was given to Ugandan authorities by Sudanese officials after the meeting, which took place near the border between Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Kony, clad in a blue beret and a military uniform with general's pips, looked healthy. He said he had been unfairly blamed for atrocities the LRA had not committed.
"The whole [world], even the journalists, don't know me, because to get to me is very difficult ... so people believe the propaganda that Kony is a killer," he said.
Kony and four other top LRA commanders - including his deputy, Vincent Otti, who also appears in the video, - are on the run, having been indicted in October 2005 on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague.
"I am not a terrorist," he insisted. "I am a rebel in military opposition ... I am in opposition. If Museveni says that, then it means that all opposition leaders in Africa should also be taken to The Hague."
Earlier this week, Museveni said he would "guarantee [Kony's] safety" if the LRA stopped fighting and agreed to peace talks by the end of July, although the nature of the promised protection was not immediately clear. Kony claims to be fighting to replace Museveni's government with one based on the Bible's 10 Commandments, but LRA fighters are more notorious for their brutal attacks on civilians and their abduction of tens of thousands of children for use as porters, sex slaves and child soldiers.
The United Nations has described the war in northern Uganda as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, which has gone largely unnoticed by the international community.
Since the ICC indictments, which led to increased cooperation between Kampala and Khartoum, Uganda has accused the rebels of moving from their bases in southern Sudan to northeastern
DRC.
credit: Irinnews.org
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