Uganda's LRA rebels seek talks with government
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-11-30 16:27

The deputy leader of one of Africa's most brutal rebel groups said in a rare communication that his Lord's Resistance Army was ready to hold talks with the Ugandan government to end a 19-year-old insurgency.

Speaking by satellite telephone, Vincent Otti told BBC radio in Kampala that he was calling on the instructions of the cult-like group's elusive leader -- one of the world's most wanted men following international arrest warrants.

"The chairman, General Joseph Kony, has authorised me to talk to you that we want peace talks with the government of Uganda," Otti said in the remarks broadcast on Wednesday.

"We are now ready to talk peace."

Otti also denied the LRA was behind recent killings of aid workers, and said he was ready to face justice.

The LRA rebellion has ruined northern Uganda, uprooting more than 1.6 million people and triggering what the United Nations calls one of the world's most neglected humanitarian disasters.

But with warrants for LRA leaders issued in The Hague, and two military forces agreeing to hunt them down, many in the north say the movement is under more pressure than ever.

Otti's call to the BBC late on Tuesday followed a recent surge in violence in the north, with the military saying 21 civilians were killed in LRA attacks last week.

It was not immediately clear, however, why Otti had chosen to make his rare, public pronouncement this week.

Uganda's government was sceptical of the appeal, saying the rebels had used ceasefire calls in the past to win time to regroup and re-arm. "We are not really taking this very seriously at all," Information Minister Nsaba Buturo told Reuters. "We have been here before."

The minister also questioned why the offer came via media.

"I DID NOTHING"

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.

In October, Kony and Otti found themselves among the world's most wanted men when the International Criminal Court (ICC) unveiled arrest warrants for the LRA leadership.

Otti, who said he was calling from an undisclosed location in northern Uganda, added he was ready to face an ICC judge, but 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."

Otti denied the LRA was behind ambushes on non-governmental organisations on both sides of the border in which at least five aid workers were 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."

The LRA has long operated from mountain hideouts in neighbouring southern Sudan, and Ugandan troops are hunting for them there alongside former Sudanese rebels.