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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 17 October 2006

UGANDA: Rebels want review of ceasefire, alleging new attacks

KAMPALA, 17 Oct 2006 (IRIN) - The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) on Tuesday demanded an urgent review of its ceasefire agreement with the Ugandan government, claiming that the army had opened fire on rebel fighters on their way to an assembly point in southern Sudan.

"We want the agreement to be reviewed so that the SPLA [the army of the government of southern Sudan] should tell us whether they are able to provide security to our forces and whether the [Ugandan] government is willing to abide by the agreement," said Ayena Odongo, legal adviser to the LRA delegation at the peace talks in Juba, the capital of southern Sudan.

He said the LRA would demand a review of the ceasefire at the Tuesday evening session of the peace talks.

The LRA says Ugandan troops attacked them in two separate incidents on Monday at Bilinyang, 100 kilometres southeast of Juba. The LRA said one of its fighters was wounded in the attacks.

However, the army denied attacking the LRA. "The information we have is that they were attacked by some militia group in southern Sudan," Maj Felix Kulaigye, the army spokesman, said. "Bilinyang is 100 kilometres from Owiny Ki-Bul, what were they doing there?"

Owiny Ki-Bul, in southern Sudan's Eastern Equatoria State, is one of the areas where LRA fighters are supposed to assemble during the peace talks.

"In spite of all that provocation by the Ugandan army, we are still focused on the talks. The only problem is that the mediation has failed to do its job," Odongo said.

The government of southern Sudan is mediating in the peace talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA.

Ugandan Interior Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, who is leading the government team at the talks, said the army would investigate the alleged attack. However, he said LRA fighters were still roaming the southern Sudanese countryside from where they used to carry out cross-border raids into Uganda. The movement of the LRA, he said, violated the ceasefire agreement of 26 August that required the rebels to assemble in designated camps.

"If they were moving to the assembly points then they should have liaised with the cessation of hostilities agreement monitoring team and their movements would have been coordinated," Rugunda said.

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This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2006