Uganda's LRA rebels seek talks with government

KAMPALA - The deputy leader of the Lord's Resistance Army said in a rare communication the rebels were prepared to hold peace talks with the Ugandan government to end a 19-year-old insurgency.

Speaking by satellite telephone, Vincent Otti said he was calling on the instructions of the cult-like group's elusive leader.

"The chairman, General Joseph Kony, has authorised me to talk to you that we want peace talks with the government of Uganda," Otti said. "We are now ready to talk peace."

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebellion has ruined northern Uganda, uprooting more than 1.6 million people and triggering what the UN calls one of the world's most neglected humanitarian disasters.

Otti predicted the government would reject the call for talks, saying it had ignored earlier LRA ceasefire offers. He said the LRA had not been defeated.

Government officials were not immediately available for comment.

The rebels have no clear political aims beyond opposing Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, but are notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and abducting more than 20,000 children as fighters, porters and sex slaves.

Talks to end the violence broke down earlier this year after the rebel group's main negotiator surrendered.

Analysts said further talks were effectively ruled out in October after the International Criminal Court (ICC) unveiled arrest warrants for the LRA leadership.

That placed Kony and Otti among the world's most wanted men.

Otti said he was ready to face an ICC judge in The Hague, but that the government should also be in the dock.

"I am ready because I know that I did nothing. If I am going to the court to be charged, then the government must also be taken into court," he said.

"We are fighting with Uganda, but not with the international body." He said he was calling from an undisclosed location in northern Uganda. A top mediator confirmed the caller was Otti.

Otti denied the LRA was behind ambushes on non-governmental organisations in northern Uganda and southern Sudan in which at least five aid workers have been killed in recent weeks.

He blamed LRA defectors and Uganda's military.

"We are not targeting any aid workers," he said. "We are only targeting government soldiers. We are not the ones."

- REUTERS