Religious leaders lobby Bush on northern crisis

Uganda's religious leaders have urged US President George W. Bush, who arrived in the country on Friday, to use his influence with the international community to seek a peaceful solution to the insurgency in the north. In a letter dated 9 July, the Acholi Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative (ARLPI) organisation, called on Bush to try and persuade the Sudanese government to stop supplying arms to rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) who have been destabilising the region for 18 years. "We are concerned that the international community remains silent when children are dying in their thousands and many more are permanently living in terror and trauma," the letter said. Up to 15,000 children, some as young as five, have been abducted and forcibly recruited into the ranks of the LRA, and girls have been turned into sex slaves, causing untold suffering, the letter stated. In addition, the conflict has displaced up to 850,000 people who now live in camps, while an estimated 30,000 children sleep in the streets of Gulu town for fear of abduction. "This unspeakable crime has been committed with the support of the government of Sudan, and has brought general mayhem to the community," the letter said. Sudan has repeatedly denied the allegations. Carlos Rodriguez, a Catholic missionary in the northern Ugandan town of Gulu, told IRIN the letter to Bush was part of the religious leaders' most recent initiative to draw international attention to the plight of children in northern Uganda. "At the moment we have reached a kind of stalemate where both sides continue to fight until both are tired," he said.