Annan enhances UN effort to counter Ugandan rebels
Source: Reuters
By Irwin Arieff UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 (Reuters) - The United Nations plans to become more deeply involved in efforts to end the Lord's Resistance Army's reign of terror in northern Uganda, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Monday. The LRA, which says it wants to rule Uganda according to the biblical Ten Commandments, has become notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and abducting thousands of children as fighters, porters and sex slaves. About 100,000 people have been killed and nearly 2 million more driven from their homes and into camps in 20 years of brutal war waged by the group in northern Uganda, the U.N. Security Council said two weeks ago. The Ugandan government and the LRA signed a truce last month, raising hopes for a quick agreement in talks in the Sudanese city of Juba that aim to end the conflict. But LRA rebels last week threw the agreement into question by refusing to assemble in southern Sudan, an initial step required by the cease-fire deal, unless the Ugandan army first completely withdrew from the area. The army in turn accused the rebels of using the demand to distract attention from their failure to assemble at two designated points by last Friday, as the agreement required. Annan, in a Nov. 30 letter to the Security Council circulated at the United Nations on Monday, said he had decided to use his U.N. leadership role to help end the LRA problem. He named Joaquim Chissano, the former president of Mozambique, as his special envoy to LRA-affected areas, to help seek a comprehensive political settlement of the conflict dealing with its impact across the region, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, southern Sudan and Uganda. Chissano also would work with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which last year issued war crimes indictments against five LRA commanders, Annan said. The group's leaders have said they will not make peace until the court drops the charges against them.
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