Group hopes to talk peace with rebels

Members of a UK-based charity, the Africa Relief Trust, were in northern Uganda's Gulu District on Monday for talks with the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in a bid to end an 18-year war that has displaced over 1.6 million people and killed thousands, the head of the team confirmed. "We are supposed to meet two senior LRA commanders later in the day. We are currently at a UPDF [Uganda People's Defence Force] unit at Koch Kweyo, the last military unit this side, from where we are supposed to meet the rebels," Uganda's Ambassador to the African Union, Joseph Ocwet, who also heads the charity, said on Monday. Relevant government officials were aware of the mission, Ocwet told IRIN by phone from the unit, which is about 20 km from Gulu town. He said the talks would be informal and that he bore a message for the rebels from the government assuring them that nothing would be done to them if they decided to come out of the bush and surrender. "We know that they are scared of coming out because many of them might not know their fate if they surrendered, but I will tell them about the presence of the amnesty [which the government offered some time ago to rebels who surrendered] and that nothing will happen them when they surrender," Ocwet said. He admitted that his three-member mission was taking a risk in going to meet the rebels, but said it was "a risk worth taking because if no one takes it then the suffering will continue." This is not the first time groups have tried to broker peace with the LRA. In 1994, former minister Betty Bigombe almost succeeded in bringing the rebels out of the bush, but as talks progressed, the government suddenly gave the insurgents seven days to surrender or face the wrath of the army. The rebels chose the later and since then, war has raged on. In recent years religious leaders based in northern Uganda have been holding meetings with the rebels but their effort, known as the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, has yielded little result, mainly because of the mistrust that exists between the military and the LRA. The LRA has no known political aim other than ousting President Yoweri Museveni's secular government and replacing it with a regime based on the biblical Ten Commandments. The rebels have abducted thousands of children, forcing them to become fighters and, in the case of the girls, sex slaves.