Uganda

Rebel leader delays peace deal again

Article published on the 2008-04-10 Latest update 2008-04-11 10:22 TU

Joseph Kony in 2005.
(Photo : AFP)

Joseph Kony, leader of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), wants time to consult his people before signing a peace deal with the government, his mediator announced Thursday. After keeping negotiators waiting several hours, Kony, who was in the vicinity of the talks, postponed an agreement for a second time. The deal would officially end 20 years of fighting in Northern Uganda.

As dozens of officials waited for the LRA leader to show up, a Kony representative announced that he would not be coming to the scheduled ceremony in the south Sudanese town of Ri-Kwangba. Kony has been in hiding to avoid capture since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for his arrest in 2005. 

Once signed, the peace deal will officially end one of Africa's longest running civil wars, responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and an estimated two million displaced people.

The peace accord is the fruit of negotiations started after a 2006 ceasefire that were often stalled over rebel demands to lift ICC warrants. Kony and his rebel army are accused raping and mutilating civilians, recruiting thousands of child soldiers and carrying out massacres.

"The Ugandan government has been lobbying for the war crimes charges to be settled inside the country using the national judicial process and traditional justice system because it's the only way to draw the rebels out of the jungle," explained RFI's Billie O'Kadameri, who recently spent two weeks at the talks in southern Sudan.

The conflict dates to the mid 1980s, when a self-styled prophetess, Alice Lakwena, raised an army among northern Uganda's ethnic Acholi minority. She told her fighters that they were bulletproof thanks to her magic powers.

After her death, Kony, a former altar boy, took charge of the rebellion eluding the Ugandan government's grasp for years by hiding across the border in Sudan.