Uganda rebel chief seeks guarantees as talks stall
He wants physical, financial security
RI-KWANGBA, Sudan - Uganda's fugitive rebel commander Joseph Kony wants guarantees of his safety and financial security before he signs a peace deal to end one of Africa's longest wars, a spokesman said yesterday.
Ugandan government officials left the site of a planned signing ceremony on the remote Sudan-Congo border after Kony failed to appear. That cast into doubt the future of nearly two years of negotiations with his Lord's Resistance Army.
Kony, who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, had been due to sign the deal Thursday. But he first asked mediators to explain some points in the text and then fired his chief negotiator.
"Kony wants clarification of his physical and financial security, and once that is cleared up he will sign the peace agreement," rebel spokesman James Obita said.
Uganda's 22-year civil war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted 2 million more, and destabilized neighboring parts of oil-rich south Sudan and mineral-rich eastern Congo.
Before boarding a helicopter to leave yesterday, Ruhakana Rugunda, Uganda's internal affairs minister, said his team would return when Kony was ready. "We're not negotiating with angels, we knew that," he said.
He said a separate signing ceremony by President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda that had been planned for next week in the south Sudanese capital Juba had been indefinitely postponed.
Rugunda said that "unless circumstances significantly change," the government had no plans to extend an earlier truce agreement between the two sides that expires Tuesday.
Kony and two of his top deputies are wanted by prosecutors in The Hague for offenses including rape, murder, and the abduction of thousands of children to serve as fighters, porters, and sex slaves.
Vice President Riek Machar of South Sudan, who has chaired peace talks since mid-2006, said Kony had been unsure how the government planned to use its courts and traditional reconciliation rituals to counter the International Criminal Court warrants.
Machar will camp at the border and make further efforts to meet Kony, and his aides said the UN envoy to the conflict, Joaquim Chissano, hoped to join him there tomorrow. Kony has not been seen in public since 2006.
Even if Kony does sign a final peace deal, the rebels have vowed never to disarm until the court indictments are scrapped.
The Ugandan government has said it will call for the warrants to be lifted only after a final deal has been reached. Any agreement to drop the charges would have to be approved by judges at the international court.
