President offers to negotiate with LRA rebels

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has written a letter to Joseph Kony, the leader of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) fighting the government in the north, detailing terms for peace talks to end the 16-year insurgency. Ofono Opondo, a spokesman for Uganda's ruling National Resistance Movement confirmed to IRIN on Wednesday that the letter had been written on 20 July in response to requests for talks by Kony himself and the Acholi Religious Peace Initiative, which has been opposing the government's military campaign against the LRA in southern Sudan. "We have been waiting for his [Kony's] response, we have not seen any," Opondo said. According to Wednesday's The New Vision government-owned newspaper, Museveni said in the letter that he had been compelled to consider talks with the LRA through pressure brought to bear by the local population, the suffering of the people of northern Uganda and the "initial luring of Kony into fighting by some treacherous politicians". Museveni had gone on to say that he would observe a temporary ceasefire if the LRA stopped attacking civilians, soldiers and vehicles, if it ceased kidnapping and confined itself to only three camps in southern Sudan near the Ugandan border, the paper reported. "Our condition is when he chooses any of these camps, he should tell the government and then negotiations will start. For them it should be easy. Should he say he wants to hold negotiations in Uganda, then he should choose," Opondo said. The LRA has since June intensified attacks on northern Uganda, following months of relative calm. According to analysts, the renewed attacks on civilian camps, killings, abductions and destruction of property, which have characterised the LRA's military tactics, are in retaliation for the Ugandan government's military operation aimed at rooting the group out of its bases in southern Sudan. The campaign, named Operation Iron Fist, was launched in March with the permission of the Sudanese government, which had previously supported the LRA, but condemned it after relations improved with Uganda. Opondo said the government was still keen on pursuing the military option if the LRA continued attacking "soft targets". He also ruled out the possibility of Ugandan army's withdrawal from southern Sudan even if Kony responded to Museveni's proposals, as the campaign was an arrangement between two governments. "What we know is that Kony is using this [the campaign] to buy time. Because he has been rooted out of Sudan, he has come back into northern Uganda, where he hopes to terrorise the local population into submission," he said.