UGANDA: The Ugandan army says it has resumed operations against rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army despite peace talks seen as the best chance of ending the 19-year civil war.
The government had reached a "cessation of hostilities" agreement with the northern rebels to allow fighters make their way from the bush to neutral zones in southern Sudan.
However, yesterday an army spokesman said the rebels had failed to meet a September 19th deadline. "We are hunting for LRA rebels who could be still hiding in Uganda since the period given them to move to assembling centres has expired," said Maj Felix Kulayigye.
"The directive now is to fight any LRA still in Uganda or capture them and hand them over to army establishments." He said soldiers of the Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UPDF) would return to positions abandoned during the cessation, but insisted that talks aimed at ending one of Africa's most brutal civil wars would continue.
UN officials often refer to the conflict as the world's worst and most forgotten. Tens of thousands of people have died and much of northern Uganda has been turned into ghost country. As much as 90 per cent of the population lives in squalid aid camps.
The LRA, led by the shadowy figure of Joseph Kony, has been responsible for bloodthirsty acts of violence. It forced thousands of boys to take up arms and used young girls as sex slaves.
Opponents have had their lips cut off and cycling is banned in areas under its control - punishable by amputation. Both sides have traded accusations that the other has broken ceasefire terms during talks held in the southern Sudanese town of Juba. Yesterday's announcement is the latest setback in tortuous negotiations.
Aid agencies have repeatedly warned that the talks were on the brink of collapse. Leaders of the LRA insisted they were committed to peace, but gave ominous warnings that they would resist attacks. Vincent Otti, deputy leader of the cult-like rebel army, said: "If the LRA collide with the UPDF, they will fight. That is what the UPDF wants. But for us, we don't want to fight, we want to talk. The peace process will bring peace in northern Uganda."
A three-week truce was supposed to allow rebel fighters to make their way from hideouts in northern Uganda or the Democratic Republic of Congo to two camps, to the east and west of the Nile in southern Sudan.
Some 1,500 are believed to have assembled a few miles from the camps, for fear of attacks by Ugandan troops. But thorny issues remain to be resolved. Most problematic is how to negotiate a final settlement and amnesty when the LRA leadership has been indicted for war crimes at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.