Group says rebels ready to talk

Representatives of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) have said that the Ugandan rebel group is “keen to talk” with Uganda’s government, according to a team that met a rebel delegation in the northern district of Gulu on Monday evening. "We managed to meet three LRA rebel commanders, who said they all wanted peace talks," said Joseph Ocwet, who led a mission sent by the UK-based charity, Africa Relief Trust, to Gulu to meet the rebels. “The talks were successful.” "They told us that we could start talks in a week's time depending on the response from the government and after their consultations with senior rebel commanders,” added Ocwet, who is also Uganda’s ambassador to the African Union. “They told us that LRA leader Joseph Kony was willing to take part in the talks, but at a later date because he will not be available next week." The three rebel commanders said earlier attempts at dialogue that failed had been sabotaged. They told the three-member mission that, in the past, their emissaries had been killed by the army which, they alleged, had once sent the rebels a ‘gift’ in the form of a "time bomb that detonated and killed one of the rebel commanders". In 1994, former minister Betty Bigombe almost succeeded in bringing the rebels out of the bush, but as talks progressed, the government gave the insurgents seven days to surrender or face the wrath of the army. The rebels chose the latter and the war continued. Ocwet said that he was returning to the capital, Kampala, to brief the government and hoped that talks would start soon as the rebels had promised to contact his group through emissaries. Ocwet said he and his team were made to walk in the bushes for over three miles - without their military escorts - to the meeting place. He carried a message to the rebels assuring them that nothing would be done to them if they decided to surrender. During the meeting, rebel commanders warned that the government should not claim the LRA had been defeated as it was still able to fight, but just wanted to resolve the conflict through peaceful means, Ocwet said. "They told us that we should not mistake them as being defeated, they can continue fighting, but they want to resolve the war peacefully," he said. 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 meeting between Ocwet’s delegation and the LRA representatives came as the head of the UN’s Inter-Agency Internal Displacement Division, Dennis McNamara, visited the area to assess the main protection problems faced by internally displaced people (IDPs), of whom there are about 1.6 million in northern Uganda. McNamara visited two camps in Gulu District to assess the situation and see how the problems were being addressed. He listened to IDPs’ grievances, including lack of access to relief food – neither camps is recognized by government. They also told him they were apprehensive about the general security situation even though the army has maintained that it has improved. McNamara was also scheduled to meet with relief agencies and visit the “night commuters” - children who leave their homes every evening to take refuge in towns for fear of being abducted by the LRA. The rebels have kidnapped thousands of children, forcing them to fight and, in the case of the girls, to become sex slaves.