Uganda peace talks to resume next week

The chief mediator of talks aimed at ending northern Uganda’s civil war has called both sides back to talks next week, but acknowledges the rebels might not come.

Southern Sudan has mediated talks between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army since July.

But the rebels now question Southern Sudan’s neutrality and say they want the talks moved to Kenya or South Africa and another mediator appointed.

The northern Uganda conflict has affected eastern Congo and Sudan’s south, which only came out of a 21-year conflict in 2005.

Mediators sent written invitations to both sides yesterday resume their negotiations in Juba by Monday, said Riek Machar, the chief mediator, speaking on the phone from the Southern Sudan capital of Juba.

“I hope they show up, particularly the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), because the LRA is still receiving the services which we pledged,” Machar, who is also Southern Sudan’s vice president, said.

“It is not easy shifting venues of peace talks. It takes years for anyone to pick up the process, particularly when (all) the parties do not agree to change the venue,” Machar said.

Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania will be invited to act as external observers and guarantors of any peace deal that is reached, Machar said. He said he and the UN envoy to the northern Uganda, former Mozambican President Joachim Chissano, decided on Wednesday to invite the four.

On Tuesday, Ugandan government negotiators said they accepted Juba as the venue for talks and believed the rebels’ withdrawal was temporary.

Machar said that the Lord’s Resistance Army relies on Southern Sudan troops to protect its fighters at two assembly points for the rebels defined in a fragile truce and the rebels also rely on the Southern Sudanese government for food.

Machar said some rebels left one assembly point to get food and claimed the food supplied by Southern Sudan was poisoned.

Machar said his government also was paying for the negotiators’ stay in Juba.

The total costs of support lent to the rebels was about £1.4m (€2.2m) to date, Machar said. Two months ago, other countries pledged to help fund the peace process.

Lord’s Resistance Army officials said that they withdrew from the talks because on January 9 Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said that the only solution to the northern Uganda conflict was a military one.

At the same occasion to mark the second anniversary of a north-south Sudan peace deal, Southern Sudan’s President Salva Kiir said that his government was losing patience with delays in the talks, and accused Sudan’s national army of supporting the rebels, something al-Bashir denied.

The Lord’s Resistance Army is made up of the remnants of a rebellion that began after President Yoweri Museveni took power in 1986.

The rebels are 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.