By Tim Cocks

KAMPALA, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Uganda's Lords Resistance Army rebels met President Yoweri Museveni on Saturday on a historic visit home to boost peace talks aimed at ending two decades of war, the government said.

Delegates representing the LRA at peace talks in South Sudan arrived in Kampala on Thursday -- their first visit since negotiations began in July last year.

In a historic meeting with government officials on home soil, the rebels -- notorious for slicing body parts off villagers and abducting children -- released a white dove into the air to symbolise their commitment to peace.

The meeting with Museveni was their second, following a brief one last year in south Sudan which ended in acrimony.

"They're meeting as we speak," government spokesman Fred Opolot said. "President's Museveni's very willing to talk to them."

Opolot said he did not know what the delegation headed by Martin Ojul would discuss in the private, closed-door talks. The LRA were not immediately available for comment.

Increasingly cordial negotiations between LRA delegates and the government have raised hopes of an end to a war which killed tens of thousands of people and displaced two million.

This year, they signed phase three of a five-stage deal.

But LRA leader Joseph Kony and other top commanders have so far refused to quit their jungle hideouts in east Democratic Republic of Congo to participate directly in talks, fearing international arrest warrants against them.

"He (Museveni) is encouraging the rebels to come home. No harm will be done to them," Opolot said.

Addressing journalists on Thursday, the LRA hinted they might be willing to sign a final peace deal even if the International Criminal Court (ICC) upholds indictments against them, previously the biggest sticking point to talks.

Both sides want the rebels to undergo justice and reconciliation in Uganda, but the ICC says any such process would have to dish out stiff punishments for grave crimes.

For some LRA delegates -- mostly rebel sympathisers from the Ugandan Diaspora in Britain, the United States and Kenya -- this trip was their first visit home since they fled Uganda after Museveni seized power in a 1986 coup.

A brief meeting between them and Museveni in October ended disastrously, with the rebels saying he abused them for a few minutes before leaving. The then deputy head of the rebel negotiating team, Josephine Apira, refused to shake his hand.

Ojul dropped her from the team this year because of this.

"These talks are going to be different," Opolot said. "The mood's very positive this time."

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