Uganda rebel boss Kony sincere about peace - paper
Source: Reuters
By Tim Cocks KAMPALA, Nov 17 (Reuters) - The reclusive head of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army rebels has urged the government to trust his commitment to peace talks aimed at ending one of Africa's longest wars, a state-owned newspaper said on Friday. A day after the U.N. Security Council issued a statement demanding that the peace process hurry to a conclusion, LRA leader Joseph Kony was quoted in the state-owned daily, New Vision, as saying he was committed to peace. The Ugandan army has said repeatedly it suspects the LRA are using a landmark truce signed in August and renewed this month to reorganise themselves after coming under pressure. "What should we do to prove to UPDF (Uganda People's Defence Forces) that we are sincere?" Kony said in his jungle hideout on the Sudan/Democratic Republic of the Congo border. "We do not have any other plan. We want peace," he added. The truce has wobbled in recent months, with both sides accusing each other of major violations. The U.N. statement called on both the Ugandan government and the LRA to "commit themselves fully" to a long-term solution to the conflict. The fighting has killed about 100,000 people and driven nearly two million from their homes, it said. It also appealed to the LRA to release women and children abducted during two decades of war, though Kony denied having any non-combatant women and children when he met U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland in a rare encounter on Saturday. The New Vision newspaper reported that Kony also pleaded that his relatives be allowed to visit him. In a thinly veiled jibe at the delegates representing the LRA at peace talks in the south Sudan, most of whom are LRA sympathisers from the Ugandan diaspora, Kony said he had little interest in power-sharing with the government. Power-sharing between peoples of the north and south of Uganda had been a key demand of the LRA delegates but the government team said any such deal would involve changing the constitution, which can only happen by referendum. "Issues like power-sharing over which people are wasting time is not a big problem. It will come automatically if there is confidence," Kony said. Analysts have long suspected that the LRA delegates are pushing a political agenda in which the group's commanders have little interest, being more concerned with dodging International Criminal Court indictments against them. Kony and four other commanders are wanted for war crimes such as mutilation, rape, killing civilians and abducting children and forcing them to kill.
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