Government declares 18-day truce with rebels

The Ugandan government said on Thursday it would halt military operations against Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels for 18 days on condition that they confined themselves to a designated area in the north as efforts to revive peace talks continued. "The president has declared a ceasefire in an area where people in the bush can be as part of support from government to end the conflict in the north peacefully," said Interior Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, who heads a government team trying to engage the rebels in peace talks. The truce will take effect on Friday morning, Rugunda told IRIN. Another member of the team, junior security minister Betty Akech, said that the "ceasefire zone" would give rebels time to consult, and that they could be supplied with necessities like food by people they trusted as they waited for peace talks between the government's peace team and LRA representatives. Government forces, she said, would not attack the rebels as long as they confined themselves to the designated area. Army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza described the area as a 45-square km stretch of land between the districts of Gulu and Kitgum. The government and the LRA had been expected to sign a peace deal on 31 December 2004, but the process collapsed when the rebels asked for more time to consult on a draft agreement the government had proposed. The government then launched a new military offensive against the rebels, ending a truce that had lasted several weeks, but chief mediator Betty Bigombe, a former Ugandan minister, kept up her mediation effort, meeting rebel leaders in northern Uganda, where they are based. The LRA has been fighting since 1988, ostensibly to overthrow the government of President Yoweri Museveni. The group is notorious for its brutal attacks on civilian targets and has been widely condemned, mainly for its indiscriminate killings and abduction of children. The conflict in northern Uganda has displaced an estimated 1.6 million people who have been forced to live in camps scattered across the northern region.