Last chance for peace?

A displaced people's camp in Lira, northern Uganda (Photo: Julia Katorobo/CMS)

Uganda has given rebel leader Joseph Kony a last chance to embrace amnesty.

President Yoweri Museveni, in a joint move with Sudanese Vice-President Salva Kiir, has given Kony a new ultimatum of 60 days, lasting up to July this year, “to peacefully end terrorism”.

This comes in the wake of reports that Kiir, while in Uganda on Saturday, delivered Kony’s own request for peace talks to Museveni.

However, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has weighed in, saying that Uganda must honour its commitment to arrest Kony, who is the first person to be indicted by the ICC.

The United States appeared to back the court’s position this week, as a US Africa minister said that getting rid of the LRA “before the end of this year” was a ‘priority’ of the Bush administration.

Ugandan daily The New Vision reported the comments of US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer.  Referring to the LRA as “a nasty little group”, she said, “I say, as ICC indicted war criminals, they need to be captured and turned over to the court.”

The latest series of events in Uganda’s drawn-out search for peace began last week in the jungle of the Equatorial Province of southern Sudan, when Kony reportedly met and held talks with Salva Kiir’s deputy, Mr Riek Machar, and asked him to take the message to Museveni.

Prior to that, Machar had reportedly met, in southern Sudan, Kony’s deputy Vincent Otti, who also said he wanted direct talks with the government.

Women at a displaced people's camp in Pader, northern Uganda

(Photo: Yemi Adedeji/CMS)

Kony’s so-called Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which is more of a mystic cult than a genuine resistance movement, has wrought havoc in northern Uganda for the last 20 years, killing, maiming and abducting people.  The greater percentage of people in the north live in displaced people’s camps, unable to farm their own land for fear of the rebels.

Public opinion in the United States has recently woken up to the situation in northern Uganda after it was featured at the end of April on the Oprah Winfrey show, America’s most influential chat show.