Ugandan rebels want talks venue moved from Sudan
Source: Reuters
(Adds chief mediator's reaction) By Wangui Kanina NAIROBI, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel representatives want peace talks with the government to be held in Kenya instead of southern Sudan, where they say they are not welcome, an LRA official said on Friday. The new U.N. envoy for Uganda's conflict, former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano, was expected to attend the resumption of talks to end one of Africa's longest-running wars in the southern Sudanese capital Juba on Monday. But Martin Ojul, head of the LRA peace team, said delegates representing some of Africa's most feared insurgents had withdrawn from Juba because of strained relations with Sudan. Uganda rejected the request for a new venue. "We don't accept changing the venue to Nairobi," the head of the government's peace team, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, told Reuters. "The seat of the talks is Juba. Juba remains an appropriate venue." The LRA's statement came three days after Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir vowed to "get rid of the LRA from Sudan". "In the circumstances and due to security considerations, the LRA delegation for the peace talks are not going back to Juba but would prefer that the talks resume in a neutral venue, preferably in Kenya," Ojul said in a statement in Nairobi. Ojul said he met Chissano on Thursday to explain why the LRA delegation would not be returning to Juba and said South Africa was another desired venue. "We wonder why the president of Sudan should consider a military option ... when our forces (in south Sudan) are there by agreement of the cessation of hostilities," he said. Sudanese officials mediating in the peace talks were unavailable for comment. STOP-START TALKS It was the latest upset in stop-start talks brokered by the regional Government of South Sudan to end a two-decade war that has killed tens of thousands and uprooted nearly two million more people. The two sides last month extended a landmark truce until the end of February while talks continue, but little progress has been made towards a final agreement, with both sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire. Riek Machar, the chief mediator at the peace talks and also South Sudan's vice president, said he expected the talks to resume on Monday in Juba as planned. "(President) Bashir has said such things before" he told Reuters. "If they stay in Nairobi, who will mediate?". A Kenyan minister who declined to be named said the government could not yet comment on whether it would be willing to host peace talks. Before moving to the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the LRA had bases in southern Sudan from which they launched attacks across the border into Uganda. Chissano arrived in Uganda on Friday morning for talks with government officials and was due to visit the country's war-ravaged north over the weekend. Analysts say Bashir's comments were aimed at distancing Khartoum from the LRA, whom it sponsored for years in retaliation for Uganda's support for south Sudanese rebels. (Additional reporting by Tim Cocks in Kampala)
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