Darfur: Rebels Say Bombing Drives Thousands from Homes

From Reuters

Darfur rebels accused the government of bombing South Darfur on Thursday, the latest attack in an aerial campaign that has driven thousands of people from their homes over the past month.

"There is aerial bombardment on a daily basis -- bombing by MiG 29 and by Antonov (in South Darfur)," Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) commander Abel Aziz el-Nur Ashr Ashr said.

Ashr said 20,000 people in the area south west of Adila town near the eastern border of Darfur had fled their homes to the bush without access to clean water during the fighting which has been ongoing for the past month.

Ashr said bombers attacked again in South Darfur early on Thursday. The army was not immediately available to comment.

On Wednesday JEM and Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) attacked an army base in the Kordofan region next to Darfur, which they said was the logistical and supply centre for ongoing attacks in South Darfur.

The rebels said 15 soldiers were killed.

"We are still controlling the military camp," Ashr told Reuters by telephone. "We have four injured and three killed."

He said all the army prisoners who rebels caught during the assault had been released.

The army said late on Wednesday denied there was an army base in Wad Banda and said rebels had attacked the town but that government troops had them surrounded.

Ashr said on Thursday the army was nowhere in sight.

"They retreated and there's no one now," he said, adding rebels expected the government to retaliate.

The African Union peacekeeping force, struggling to defend itself, has declared the area no-go, making it difficult to verify facts.

Darfur: UN Official Warns of Militarised Camps

From Reuters

Camps teeming with frustrated refugees in Sudan's Darfur region have become militarised and present a danger that cannot be ignored, a U.N. official was quoted as saying on Thursday.

The U.N.'s emergency relief coordinator, John Holmes, told the BBC the presence of weapons in the camps and the proximity of the Sudanese military outside refugee centres made for a potentially explosive situation.

"If you have large numbers of people in camps, you have the government of Sudan's military presence in the area, there are bound to be clashes from time to time," Holmes was quoted as saying on the BBC Web site.

"The politicisation and militarisation on the ground in the camps is a fact of life you can't ignore," he added.

Last week, the Sudanese military attacked Kalma Camp, in South Darfur, where it said rebels behind deadly attacks on police were hiding.

Holmes denied the camps had become rebel bases, but he said young men in the centres had grown frustrated and politicised.

Darfur: U.N. Police Chief Calls for More Peacekeepers

From Reuters

Major Western nations must offer more police for Darfur to end four years of violence, the retiring U.N. police chief said on Thursday as the world body struggles to find enough officers for the Sudanese province.

The United Nations Security Council has agreed to send 26,000 U.N. and African Union peacekeepers to the Western Sudanese region to end four years of killing and violence that has left an estimated 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. The mission will need about 6,400 police. But outgoing U.N. police chief Mark Kroeker said the number of officers from major developed nations was dwindling and countries such as Britain, the United States, Canada, Italy and France needed to offer more.

"The countries that have been talking about Darfur need to now do something about Darfur with their deployment of police in probably the most desperate place in the world," Kroeker, an American, told reporters at a police conference in Canberra.

Kroeker, in Australia for a meeting of the International Policing Advisory Council of police chiefs and academics, said countries always faced a difficult choice over releasing police from fighting local crime to take part in overseas missions.

In the past year, United Nations police deployments increased by 30 percent, with the numbers likely to grow significantly in the coming year from the 10,000 police currently on missions.

"The challenge is always a human challenge," the former Los Angeles deputy police chief said. "It really needs good hearted police officers, who are compassionate and competent."

Australian Andrew Hughes, who has been appointed to replace Kroeker as the U.N.'s police chief, said more than 60 countries had committed police to the Darfur mission.

But more were needed for what would be the largest international police operation ever mounted, he said.

Hughes, who was commissioner of police in Fiji before he was expelled by the leaders of a military coup last year, said the key to success in Darfur relied upon establishing a lasting law and justice system.

"You can't just throw police at a problem like that. We have to have proper court system, public defenders, public prosecutors, prisons, a justice system, human rights organisations, NGO's, monitoring watchdogs," Hughes said.

Darfur: Pronk Slams EU for Apologizing to Sudan

From the Sudan Tribune

Jan Pronk the former special representative of the UN Secretary General to Sudan has criticized the European Union for offering an apology to Khartoum over the action of the EU envoy to Sudan.

In an interview with Radio France Internationale on Wednesday, Jan Pronk described the EU apology to Sudan as "mistake" and "counterproductive". He further said “there is nothing to apologize for; the diplomat just did his job.”

Kent Degerfelt, EU representative to Sudan, was declared persona non grata last week along with Nuala Lawlor Canadian chargé d’affaires for what Khartoum presented as "interfering" in Sudan’s affairs. However, last Saturday Sudan invited the EU envoy back alleging that Louis Michel, the European development commissioner, had apologized to Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir.

Pronk said he was surprised by the move of the EU towards the Sudanese government. He argued that this apology will constitute a precedent in the relations between the EU and Sudan.

He also said that Sudanese have succeeded to divide the EU and Canada.

"What now has happened also is what exactly Sudanese do, divide and rule. They made division between Canada and the EU (…). It is a mistake and totally counterproductive."

In tit-for-tat move, Canadian Foreign minister decided to expel a Sudanese diplomat from Ottawa. "Wherever they are posted, Canada’s diplomats will continue to work to uphold Canadian values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law," he said.

The former envoy said that Sudan needs the EU for its humanitarian assistance and for its political support.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ali Karti said the two Western diplomats were considered as persona non grata because they contacted the security agencies over the detention of a leading member in the Democratic Unionist Party, Mahmoud Hassanein. He is arrested over an alleged coup attempt.

Karti further said "It is necessary now to send a clear message to whoever thinks that the kind of relationship between Sudan and the United Nations, and the international community in general, is that of submissiveness, complacence about the concepts or beliefs that the Westerners want the Sudanese Government to admit as fait accompli."

Sudan: Canada Says Diplomat to be Ousted

From AP

A Sudanese diplomat will be expelled from Canada within days in response to Sudan's decision to kick out Canada's charge d'affaires, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

The Foreign Affairs Department said the Sudanese diplomat, who has yet to be identified, will be ordered to leave the country by Saturday. Ministry officials said the diplomat would hold a similar rank to Canadian acting charge d'affaires Nuala Lawlor, who the Sudanese government ordered expelled last Thursday after accusing him of "meddling in its affairs."

"Canada considers the expulsion of our charge d'affaires to be entirely unjustified," Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier said in a statement.

Along with Lawlor, Sudan said it was expelling the European Union's top diplomat in the country for "meddling" in its affairs. But the government later said it would allow Kent Degerfelt to complete the remaining three weeks of his mandate as long as he was replaced by someone new.

On Monday, Sudan also ordered out the head of CARE International's operations in the country. No reason was given for the official's expulsion, but the group had been directing one of the largest private aid efforts in Darfur.

CAR: Bush War Leaves Villages Deserted

From Reuters

The village of Korosigna in northern Central African Republic is barely recognisable to those who once lived there.

Every house is either demolished, abandoned or burned to the ground. Weeds and bushes have taken hold. Many homes are barely visible as the forest has moved in and engulfed the ruins.

According to locals, government soldiers attacked Korosigna without warning in January 2006, part of a two-year-old bush war fought against rag-tag rebels across northern parts of the former French colony, landlocked in the heart of Africa.

Like countless other villages in northern Central African Republic, it has sat empty ever since, its inhabitants too terrified to come back.

"They came primarily to kill us," said Kode Grégoire, the village chief, standing on a pile of debris which was once his home. "They said nothing. They started shooting and we fled. Then they burnt our houses."

President Francois Bozize is preparing to hold a national dialogue in coming months with rebel groups and political foes to try to end the fighting.

He has signed peace pacts with two rebel groups this year but stability has proved elusive.

Roads once packed with villagers selling produce and going to market are totally deserted. Only aid workers and rebels still move about, locked in an uneasy co-existence after rebels killed a Doctors Without Borders volunteer two months ago.

While government forces are still in control of key towns in the north such as Paoua and Bossangoa, the rest of the region -- purportedly under rebel control -- is haunted by an eerie calm.

Civilians duck into the bush if they hear an engine approach, fearful it could be the army.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates at least 265,000 people have been forced from their homes since the rebels began their bid to overthrow Bozize in late 2005.

The lucky ones have crossed into neighbouring Chad or Cameroon as refugees: those too old, sick or terrified to move have been left behind to eke out a living in the forests.

"Life in the bush is very hard," said Mbaidoum Alfonse, a 70-year-old farmer whose son was shot dead by the army when his village of Bodouli was attacked.

"There is no drinking water, there is no health care, there are no schools, we sleep badly and we eat badly."

According to aid workers in the region, the majority of attacks on villages have been carried out by government forces. Many witnesses say it is Bozize's elite Presidential Guard with their distinctive green berets who are responsible.

Often the violence follows a similar pattern: the rebels strike government positions and the army retaliates by attacking nearby villages suspected of harbouring them.

Many of the internally displaced civilians in the country return to their villages for only a few hours each day, leaving again at night to sleep hidden in the bush.

"There is no school in the bush so I come, I teach, and then together with the children we leave each day by 2 p.m.," said Bekiya Valentine, the village pharmacist in Bemal near the border with Chad, who started teaching as an act of good will.

In other areas, "bush schools" have been set up in the jungle, away from the main roads.

"We are trapped," said Jean-Jacques Majitoloum, a teacher who fled his home 18 months ago and teaches hundreds of children in a forest clearing. "We can't leave, we can't see our family."

In one empty village, an old man tending his fields cuts a lonely figure. His legs are so crippled he can barely move.

Asked why he did not leave with the others, he replied: "I cannot walk to reach the bush. I'm not scared -- I don't fear death anymore. If they want to kill me they will do it, and there's nothing I can do."

Uganda: Special Court for LRA/Victims Want LRA Tried Locally

From The Voice

THE Ugandan government plans to set up a special crimes court to try the top leaders of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

The court would function as an alternative to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has indicted and issued arrest warrants against LRA leader Joseph Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti and three other senior commanders.

Kony and his men are wanted for allegedly committing grave atrocities such as murder, rape, mutilation, torture, abduction, and forced recruitment during the two-decade long war in northern Uganda.

But the government said last week that a final decision on the formation of a special court will be taken after consultations with war victims.

The consultations, which are part of the peace talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA began last Monday and are being mediated by the Government of southern Sudan.

"We have discussed this issue with legal experts - local and international - and there is a possibility of government forming a unique legal system designed to achieve lasting peace and accountability," Dr Ruhakana Rugunda told reporters in Kampala last Tuesday.

Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, the internal affairs minister, is the government's lead negotiator at the talks that have thus far lasted a year and are being held in the Southern Sudanese town of Juba.

"We may decide to come up with a special court for certain individuals if the victims wish so," the minister said after the news conference in kampala, Tuesday.

From Reuters

Most of the victims of Uganda's 20-year war want local courts to try the Lord's Resistance Army rebels for alleged war crimes, rather than see them indicted by an international tribunal, the government said on Wednesday.

Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, chief government negotiator at talks with the rebels, said he had carried out "extensive consultations" with Ugandans in the war-ravaged north, but gave no figures.

"Very many of them felt that Uganda by using traditional and formal justice systems, will provide a sufficient alternative to handle issues of accountability and reconciliation," he said.

Two decades of war in northern Uganda killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 1.7 million before peace talks in south Sudan began in July 2006, leading to a truce the following August that has been largely respected.

But the LRA has said it will never sign a final peace deal unless the International Criminal Court drops indictments against four top commanders for crimes such as killing civilians, slicing body parts off victims and kidnapping children.

The rebels have said they might accept local courts as an alternative to the Hague-based tribunal but are angered at what they say is the government's unwillingness to put its own soldiers accused of atrocities on trial.

In June, the Human Rights Centre at the University of California, Berkeley, surveyed 2,875 people in the north, 58 percent of whom wanted the LRA to be tried but with 76 percent saying they feared the ICC indictments would jeopardise peace.

Elders from the LRA's Acholi tribe want the rebels to undergo traditional reconciliation rituals to deal with crimes. But human rights groups argue such rituals would fail to dish out punishments fitting the alleged crimes, such as long jail terms.

Darfur: Rebel Group Seizes Sudanese Army Base

From Reuters

A Darfur rebel group said it seized control of a Sudanese army base in neighbouring Kordofan province on Wednesday.

Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) leader Khalil Ibrahim told Reuters his forces and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) Unity faction attacked the army base, some 200 kms (125 miles) from the border with Darfur and held by 1,700 soldiers.

Ibrahim said the attack was in retaliation for government attacks and bombardments in their areas in South Darfur state.

The attack will hinder peace talks due to begin in October. Previous similar attacks have provoked strong retaliation by the army during Darfur's 4-1/2 year conflict.

"This afternoon the JEM branch in North Kordofan and SLA Unity took Wad Banda, a strong army base," he said. A brigade of 1,200 soldiers and 500 central reserve police, a government militia, were based there and had fled the barracks.

"We have prisoners and have taken many vehicles... and ammunitions and weapons. We have small losses and injuries ourselves," he said.

Many rebels groups and commanders agreed a common negotiating platform earlier this month, and agreed to a truce if the government also agreed.

Both sides accuse the other of starting ongoing clashes in South Darfur state. JEM said it had downed a plane that had been bombing the area.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon on Tuesday condemned the bombing as in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution.

A struggling African Union peacekeeping force cannot protect itself and has declared the area no-go because of clashes.

A joint U.N.-AU 26,000-strong peacekeeping mission will take over from the AU. British parliamentarians said they needed to use force if confronted to deter violence in Darfur.

"If they are seriously challenged they will have to respond ... it has to be with force," said Liberal Democrat parliamentarian Susan Kramer.

"The hybrid force will have to show that it's utterly determined and show that it will not tolerate attacks on the force or attacks on vulnerable people."

Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of marginalising the remote west. Khartoum mobilised militias to quell the revolt.

Darfur's conflict has spread across borders to Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR). Presidents from both nations have accused Sudan of supporting rebels trying to overthrow their governments.

Late on Tuesday, CAR President Francois Bozize visited Khartoum in an apparent rapprochement.

"It's not in the interests of Sudan to disrupt the stability and security in your country or in any other country," said Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir after the talks.

"We are totally convinced that we can bilaterally ensure a successful security and stability situation in the area more than any foreign forces," Bashir said.

A European Union force has been suggested to patrol the Chad-CAR-Sudan border to prevent cross-border attacks by armed groups.

ICC: Sudan Not Cooperating on Arrests

From the UN News Center

The Sudanese Government has not moved to arrest two suspects wanted to stand trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s war-wracked Darfur region, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said today, calling on Khartoum to cooperate immediately with the court.

In an interview with the UN News Centre, Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that it is “totally unacceptable” that one of the two suspects, Ahmad Muhammad Harun, is currently Sudan’s Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs.

“He was coordinating actions to remove people from their own villages and push them into IDP [internally displaced person] camps, and now he… basically controls them,” Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said. “Harun is still in charge, effectively, of the same people. He is like the fox being in charge of the chickens.”

Unless the Government takes steps to arrest Mr. Harun and the other suspect, Janjaweed militia leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb), Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said he would inform the Security Council in his next progress report.

He said there had been no progress from Khartoum since it was informed of the arrests and its responsibilities.

“They have to remember, Sudan, that this issue is a part of their duties now that we have these global legal standards” enshrined in the ICC, said the Prosecutor. “The responsibility to execute the warrant is for the Government of Sudan,” and not for him or the ICC or the Security Council.

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said his staff were trying to monitor the movements of the two suspects to determine their whereabouts, particularly now that an Interpol red notice – which allows the warrant to be circulated around the world with the request that the wanted person is arrested with a view to extradition – has been issued for Mr. Harun.

Mr. Harun and Mr. Kushayb are accused of targeting civilians in attacks on four villages in West Darfur between August 2003 and March 2004, according to their warrants, which outlines multiple counts of personal responsibility for murder, rape and pillaging for each man.

The ICC Prosecutor has been investigating war crimes committed in Darfur amid increasing international efforts to stop the bloodshed in the impoverished region and provide justice to victims of the violence and human rights violations.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and at least two million others forced to leave their homes in Darfur since 2003 because of fighting between rebel groups, Government forces and allied Janjaweed militias.

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo, who is in New York this week, held talks today on Darfur and other issues, including the progress of cases in northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR), with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

He also spoke on the same issues, and the need for greater cooperation between the UN and the ICC, with Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Affairs Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide Francis Deng and the Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Margareta Wahlström.

Darfur: Peacekeepers Must Use Force

From Reuters

U.N. and African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur must respond with force if attacked by armed groups, British parliamentarians said on Wednesday.

The current 7,000-strong African Union force in Darfur has failed to stem violence in the region despite a 2006 peace deal.

Western countries hope the joint peacekeeping force of 26,000 troops will bring an end to 4-1/2 years of conflict which has killed 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes.

"What the people are asking for is to make a difference on the ground," said MP David Drew, chair of the British parliamentary group on Sudan.

"Either they say okay we'll wait and push somewhere else or they really do take them on and they say sorry we're going to disarm you," he said.

Susan Kramer, a member of parliament for Richmond Park, said the force could not be a soft target.

"If they are seriously challenged they will have to respond ... it has to be with force," she said.

"The hybrid force will have to show that it's utterly determined and show that it will not tolerate attacks on the force or attacks on vulnerable people," she added.

Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of marginalising the remote west. Khartoum mobilised militias to quell the revolt.

Ahead of peace talks due to begin in October, AU and U.N. mediators are trying to bring several different rebel groups to a unified platform. But Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) founder and chairman Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur has refused to join the talks until international forces have secured Darfur.

Drew said France, who is hosting Nur, should advise him to either return to Darfur or go to the talks.

"If he's a serious player he hasn't got a more important time to be around than now," he said. "He ought to be doing something because just staying in Paris isn't helpful to anybody."

Darfur's conflict has spread across borders to Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR). Presidents from both nations have accused Sudan of supporting rebels trying to overthrow their governments.

Late on Tuesday, CAR President Francois Bozize visited Khartoum in an apparent rapprochement. A European Union force has been suggested to patrol the Chad-CAR-Sudan border to prevent cross-border attacks by armed groups.

"It's not in the interests of Sudan to disrupt the stability and security in your country or in any other country," said President Omar Hassan al-Bashir after the talks.

"We are totally convinced that we can bilaterally ensure a successful security and stability situation in the area more than any foreign forces," Bashir said.

Darfur: Sudan Rejects Fighting Accusations

From AFP

Sudan has rejected allegations that it is still involved in fighting in Darfur, after it was accused of violating a UN arms embargo in the war-ravaged western region.

"These accusations are false and founded on made-up information from organizations and agencies with a political agenda," foreign ministry spokesman Ali Al Sadek said late Tuesday.

"The government hasn't had any military activities recently, and the Sudanese army has no activities in Darfur," he said.

London-based rights group Amnesty International last week said Sudan was continuing to defy a UN arms embargo, citing as evidence photographs of military equipment being delivered in July to Al Geneina airport in Darfur.

Sadek's declaration also came after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Tuesday voiced deep concern about the recent escalation in violence in Darfur.

"I am deeply concerned about the recent escalation in violence in Darfur that has caused the death of hundreds of people in the last few weeks, alone," he said.

Recent attacks, including the repeated bombardment of villages in southern Sudan, were "simply unacceptable," Ban said, announcing a visit to Darfur next week.

Sadek insisted that Khartoum was seeking stability in Darfur "the proof of which is that [the government] spared no effort to convince armed movements to reject violence."

UN: Conflict Prevention Efforts Faulted

From the AP

The United Nations spent $18 billion on peacekeeping missions around the globe in the past five years - mainly in Africa - but not enough on preventing conflicts from erupting in the first place.

That was a key conclusion of a daylong meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday which called for stepped up efforts to address the root causes of conflict. The open meeting, organized by the Republic of Congo, which hold the council presidency this month, focused especially on conflicts in Africa.

Namibia's U.N. deputy ambassdor Frieda Ithete said "about half of the world's armed conflicts and some three-quarters of the U.N. peacekeepers are in Africa."

"As we speak," she said, "there are over 6 million displaced people in the world, out of which approximately 3 million are in Africa."

Itheke underscored the need for greater investment in conflict prevention and establishment of an early warning system that would be "cost effective in saving lives and financial resources."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the meeting that there has been a 40 percent decline in armed conflict around the world since the 1990s by some estimates, with recent research crediting U.N. peacemaking, peacekeeping and conflict prevention as a major factor, "but it is not good enough."

"Violent conflicts continue to inflict immense suffering on countless people, mostly civilians, around the world," he said, adding that more "investment in prevention could save us considerable pain and expense - in Darfur, in Somalia, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in northern Uganda, in Western Sahara and elsewhere."

He called for improved mediation, a new focus on achieving political settlements, and new approaches to addressing the underlying causes of conflict.

But Ban also said the complexity of many of today's conflicts require that "prevention must go beyond mere diplomacy" to promoting tolerance of diversity within societies. This can require promoting human rights and the rule of law, helping organize elections and building democratic institutions, among other steps, he said.

China's deputy U.N. ambassador Liu Zhenmin noted that while the Security Council has often underscored its determination to prevent armed conflicts, its progress has been "less than satisfactory."

"In the past five years, the United Nations has spent more than $18 billion on peacekeeping operations," he said. "If more effective efforts had been carried out in the area of conflict prevention, much less would have been spent, and many more lives would have been saved from the scourge of conflicts."

Uganda: LRA May Face Home-Grown Tribunal

From The Christian Science Monitor

Sunlight streams through the wide leaves of banana trees onto Betty Angee, who has lived at a desolate camp for displaced civilians in northern Uganda since fleeing from the notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels four years ago. Now she says she has the chance to go home.

Last week, the Ugandan government announced that it is beginning public meetings on how to design a national tribunal that will try LRA members accused of committing war crimes.

The proposed local courts may provide an alternative to extraditing members of the rebel army to face 33 International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The LRA has refused to sign any peace deal with the government unless the charges from the ICC are dropped.

Many Ugandan survivors of the war say local courts – similar to the ones created in Rwanda after their genocide – is not only necessary for peace, but would administer justice that would be acceptable to most Ugandans. They also worry that trying LRA members in the ICC will actually make the situation worse. For human rights activists, however, the local tribunals are seen as a soft alternative that may encourage impunity.

For 20 years, the LRA has waged a savage campaign for power, notorious for forcing women and children into its ranks and cutting off the facial features of their victims. Thousands of civilians have died as a result of the conflict. Nearly 2 million have been displaced and forced to live in bleak refugee camps. Finding a way to try them for war crimes has proven difficult.

"The essence of the system would be based on truth-telling," says Ruhakana Rugunda, Internal Affairs minister and chief government negotiator at peace talks in Juba, South Sudan. He says that the tribunal will include punitive justice, but also draw on forgiveness themes from a traditional ritual known as mato oput. The system requires that a murderer face relatives of the victim and admit his crime before both drink a bitter brew as an act of reconciliation.

If created, the tribunals will not handle crimes committed by the Ugandan government forces during their conflict with the LRA. Government forces fall under the jurisdiction of preexisting courts martial. Additionally, top leaders of the LRA who helped organize genocide will face trial in a UN court, while those guilty of lesser crimes will stand trial in the traditional courts.

"The majority of the people agree that the LRA should not go to The Hague. People want the LRA punished – but not in jail for a long time," says Foreign Affairs Minister Oryem Okello, who is key in the set-up of the tribunal. Victims have expressed more interest in a "symbolic punishment," according to Mr. Okello.

"If they are punished, it will only worsen the situation," says Ms. Angee from the displacement camp. She says that in order for victims and perpetrators to "easily live together," the rebels must be forgiven.

Okello says that the justice model will be comparable to the traditional gacaca courts used in neighboring Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. "All those who admit crimes, show remorse, ask forgiveness and pay reparations will benefit from the justice mechanism," Dr. Rugunda says.

Still, for many human rights groups, traditional justice would not be enough. "This can't be a slap on the wrist ... the national trials can't be used to shield the LRA from justice," says Elise Keppler, counsel with the International Justice Program at the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Critics of local justice also are wary of the effectiveness of the seemingly simple mato oput ritual.

In response to groups that have decried a local tribunal as not harsh enough punishment, Rugunda stresses that the government does "not condone impunity."

"The ICC is supposed to only come in if the state is unwilling or incapable of handling the LRA itself," says Chris Dolan, director of the Kampala-based Refugee Law Project. "If the judicial process is vigorous enough, what's inadequate about it [the court] being in Uganda?"

Ms. Keppler worries that the special court will not satisfy international expectations. The Rome Statue of the ICC favors local prosecution, but only if it provides credible and fair prosecution with appropriate punishment.

Despite LRA leaders' calls for the ICC charges against them to be dropped, even with the local tribunals, the Ugandan government does not have the ability to unilaterally clear the indictments. And a sticking point in the tribunal creation process will be whether the government can actually detain the rebels in custody, a problem that led to the ICC's intervention.

Okello says that the public meetings about how to create the tribunals will last until the end of next month. A report will then be released in October that details the findings of the two-month-long consultations. At that point, the minister says the government will be closer to knowing what the alternative justice system will look like and when it will be set up.

"We would like to see them account for their crimes, but we are not obsessed with seeing them march off to a foreign prison," says Norbert Mao, lawyer and chairman of Gulu, one of the conflict's hardest-hit towns.

But he adds: "To think that the traditional system is enough would be to deceive ourselves."

Darfur: Ban Banks on Three-Point Plan

From DPA

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday pushed a three-point action plan to end the ethnic conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, starting with the deployment of a 26,000- strong peacekeeping operation.

Ban also said diplomacy and a political process involving the Sudanese government, combined with humanitarian and economic assistance to Darfur should contribute to ending the conflict that has killed more than 300,000 people since 2003.

Countries have promised more military and civilian personnel than needed for the so-called hybrid force of the United Nations and African Union, Ban said. But he said the real needs are logistics and air transportation, which have not been promised by troop contributing countries.

Ban will be in Sudan Monday through Thursday and then travel on to Chad and Libya, two neighbouring countries that have a bearing on the conflict in Darfur. His trip comes amid preparations to deploy the joint peacekeeping operation.

'I want to go and see for myself the very difficult conditions under which our forces will operate,' Ban told the UN Security Council, which held a one-day debate on conflict prevention in Africa.

'I also want to know first-hand the plight of those they (the UN peacekeepers) seek to help,' Ban said.

He warned that the trip is not about achieving breakthroughs in the conflict, but rather aimed at consolidating UN and African efforts to end the war between Khartoum-backed Arab militias and black African rebel forces. The two sides have signed a comprehensive peace agreement, but fighting has continued to break out between them.

Ban said he will impress on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to cooperate and support the deployment of the hybrid force and to respect agreements to support international relief workers, which assist Darfur's 4 million people who depend on aid to survive.

Khartoum has expelled in past days the leaders of three international relief organizations, including the US group Care.

He said political talks to end the ethnic conflict were 'well on track,' following Khartoum's agreement to attend negotiations with opposition leaders in Tanzania. Invitations were also to go out to some African countries and parties in the conflict so a full-fledged peace conference can take place 'by the end of summer.'

'The international community needs to help organize these efforts, working with the government of Sudan as well as the host of international aid agencies and NGOs working so heroically on the ground,' Ban said, urging support for the three-point plan.

'We live, as you all know, in a world of global problems, requiring collective responses,' he said. 'Darfur is no exception.'

He said Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi can contribute to the political process while the European Union will help by sending a peace force to eastern Chad and the Central African Republic. The UN Security Council has agreed to the EU deployment.

Darfur: Nur Needed for Peace, but Talks Will Proceed

From Reuters

Darfur's peace process needs rebel leader Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur's support, but his failure to participate will not halt talks to end the conflict in western Sudan, African Union envoy Salim Ahmed Salim said.

Nur has refused to join the ranks of Darfur rebel commanders and groups who agreed a joint position earlier this month in Tanzania, saying he wants international troops to disarm militias to secure the region before talks with the government.

"He is certainly needed in the peace process, but the peace process takes its own momentum and I would hope that Mr. Abdel Wahed becomes a part of that momentum," Salim told reporters on Tuesday after a week-long visit to Sudan.

"I can't see this peace process being stopped because the people of Darfur want peace. They are really tired to go through the agonies of what they are going through now," he added.

Nur commands few troops in Darfur, but enjoys huge support among the 2.5 million people who have fled their homes to camps in Darfur and across the border in Chad during 4-1/2 years of fighting.

Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of marginalising the arid west. Khartoum mobilised militias, known locally as Janjaweed, to quell the revolt.

An AU-mediated 2006 peace deal was signed by only one of three negotiating factions, Nur's rival Minni Arcua Minnawi.

Salim said any final agreement reached in renewed peace talks needed to address Darfuris' demands that the militia be disarmed.

"Whatever agreement that arrives must ... address this issue. Without addressing this issue you will still have a lot of concern, a lot of insecurity in the area," he said.

He said the security situation in Darfur was "disturbing" with many complaints of insecurity and the spread of arms.

Salim added last year's Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), which he helped negotiate, was a fact of life and had to be counted. But he added it could be built upon.

"We are going to focus on issues of concern which have not been sufficiently addressed in the Darfur peace agreement," he said, giving the issue of compensation as an example.

The DPA gave just $30 million compensation to the Darfuris. Khartoum has since agreed to pay $100 million, but the victims say it's not enough and demand individual compensation.

Darfur: From Genocide to Anarchy

An op-ed by Alex de Waal and Julie Flint in The Washington Post

Imagine you are a U.S. Special Forces officer and you get a call: You are being posted to Darfur. Your job is to protect African villagers from marauding Arab horsemen and to show the Sudanese security chiefs that their bluff has been called -- at last, the international community is standing up to their evil schemes.

What can you expect? According to news reports, a sort of slow-motion Rwanda in the desert. What will you find on arrival? A reality that's complicated and messy. A Darfur that has more in common with Chad, southern Sudan and -- dare we say it? -- Somalia.

In Darfur today, knowing who is on which side is not straightforward. The savage counterinsurgency offensives, with their massacres and scorched earth, that Colin Powell called "genocide" in September 2004 had in fact largely concluded by the time Powell made that historic determination. This isn't a moral exculpation; it's simply a fact. It's also been a regular sequence in Sudan's recurrent wars over the past 25 years. Episodes of intense brutality and mass displacement are followed by longer periods of anarchic internecine fighting, ably exploited by the government.

Because the vanguard of government offensives is tribal paramilitaries -- well known to prefer soft civilian targets to hardened rebels -- the result of each offensive is a fractured and demoralized society in which every group is armed and most leaders cut opportunistic alliances to preserve their power bases. The warlords who prosper in this environment deal only in the currency of power, switching alliances as their calculus shifts.

For the past three years, Darfur has been descending into this murky world of tribes-in-arms and warlords who serve the highest bidder, with some community leaders of integrity trying to carve out localities of tranquility. Many Arab militias are talking to the rebels; many erstwhile rebel leaders have struck bargains with the regime, receiving high-sounding positions and nice villas in return for providing an adornment to the government's attempts to show a pluralistic facade.

While the script of many rights campaigners and activists has remained stuck in the groove of "genocide," Darfur faces something that can be just as deadly in the long term: anarchy. The government is a dictatorship, but its writ doesn't run beyond the first checkpoints outside the towns. The army has a fearsome arsenal, but two much-heralded offensives last year were smartly and bloodily annihilated by rebels. The air force is rarely used, except when targets of opportunity arise -- or the rebels have the army on the run. There have been no large-scale offensives by the government in 2007.

The Sudanese government relies on its Arab militias for a semblance of control, but increasingly these militias pursue their own agendas. The largest loss of life this year occurred in clashes between two Arab militias, most recently at the end of July, when 100 militia members and Arab civilians died. The other big ongoing crisis, and the major cause of more than 100,000 people being displaced this year, is a multisided conflict in Southern Darfur involving warring Arab militias; rebel commanders from the Sudan Liberation Army who are now allied with the government, though other commanders are fighting it; a militia drawn from West African immigrants; and a rebel commander from the Justice and Equality Movement who answers to no one but himself. Simple, it isn't.

What's keeping Darfurians alive in this dismal war of all against all is their own skill at survival and, in the camps for the displaced, an immense relief effort. For the past two years, mortality rates among people reached by international aid have been lower than they were before the war. That's a tremendous achievement -- though the annual "hungry season," now upon us, is showing a worrying decline in child nutrition.

But the very scale of the aid effort brings its own problems. Aid agency vehicles are a tempting prize for bandits and militia leaders in a land without law. During the height of the massacres, aid agencies were scarce and their neutrality was largely respected -- not least because the two sides' military focus was on one another. It is a different story today. And as the attacks on humanitarians increase, the relief agencies duly report that things are getting worse.

For them, it is true. For the people of Darfur, the story is more complicated. So, if you are dispatched to Darfur as a peacekeeper, best to wise up quickly. Leave that fortified camp, step out of that armored car and ask the Darfurian people: "Just what the hell is going on here?"

CAR/Chad: U.N. OKs Troops

From Reuters

The Security Council gave the European Union and the U.N. the green light Monday to prepare for a military and police deployment to help protect civilians in Chad and the Central African Republic caught in the spillover of the Darfur conflict.

A council statement expressed readiness to authorize an international operation for a year to protect refugees, internally displaced people and civilians at risk in eastern Chad and the northeastern Central African Republic, and to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid.

The EU would send troops and the United Nations would contribute police, though France and the U.S. have said the year-long deployment will likely be followed by a U.N. peacekeeping operation. An EU Council of Ministers meeting on Sept. 17 will make a final decision on deploying European Union troops.

The council's statement sends an important "message of concern for the seriousness of the humanitarian situation in Chad and the Central African Republic," said France's deputy U.N. Ambassador Jean-Pierre Lacroix.

Darfur's spillover into the northeast Central African Republic and eastern Chad "has had very serious humanitarian consequences _ more refugees, more displaced persons, and more insecurity for these refugees and displaced persons," he said.

France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, whose country drafted the Security Council statement, said last week that there were 400,000 refugees and internally displaced people in Chad, and more than 200,000 displaced people in the northern Central African Republic.

Since the Security Council visited Darfur and Chad in June 2006, the U.N. has been discussing deploying international police and troops to the two impoverished countries.

Chadian President Idriss Deby opposed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's original proposal for the deployment of a U.N. military force, but agreed to an EU force after meeting with France's foreign minister in June.

The EU agreed last month to start planning for a possible 3,000-member peacekeeping mission.

Lacroix said the council statement sends a "political signal" of support, especially to the EU, to go ahead with planning for the deployment.

An EU-U.N. mission is visiting both countries, and he said the council's backing will be important for their recommendations to the EU Council of Ministers meeting.

France plans to follow up very soon with a resolution authorizing the EU force and the U.N. police mission and would like it adopted "as quickly as possible," Lacroix said.

Under a proposal from Ban, the U.N. would send up to 300 international police. He recommended that the Security Council "signal its intention to authorize" the proposed mission, which would allow for intensified coordination between the EU, U.N. and Chad.

Ripert said troops and police would be deployed at a dozen camps in Chad and at least one in northeastern Central African Republic.

Darfur: AU Envoy Faces Critics, Nur's People Want Talks

From Reuters

Thousands of Darfuris demonstrated angrily on Monday in Zalengei town to show African Union envoy Salim Ahmed Salim their despair over a peace process that has failed to bring security to western Sudan.

Salim travelled to Zalengei town as part of a tour of Darfur to get people's views on efforts to renew talks to end the 4-1/2 year war that has driven 2.5 million people from their homes.

Protests greeted him in the region which is the birthplace of rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) founder and chairman Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur and hostile territory for the AU.

A breakaway group of protestors chased Salim's convoy from the airport to the town, brandishing sticks and knives. One sign read: "Abdel Wahed is brave, broadminded and true."

On a hilltop overlooking town, thousands of women formed a multi-coloured mass protest as Salim met with community leaders.

For more than a year, African Union peacekeepers have been unable to patrol the three camps surrounding Zalengei, mostly inhabited by Darfur's largest Fur tribe, because of opposition from the 150,000 people who fled their homes to makeshift camps surrounding the town.

Nur, who resides in Paris, and one other faction rejected a May 2006 AU-mediated peace deal, which Nur's rival Minni Arcua Minnawi signed.

None of the farmers driven from their homes to Zalengei during what U.N. officials have called a "scorched earth" campaign have read that deal. But they oppose it because Nur told them to.

Salim was head of mediation during Darfur peace talks that produced the 2006 agreement.

Salim and his U.N. counterpart, Jan Eliasson, are trying to regain the confidence of the 4.2 million people displaced by the conflict and reliant on aid, and convince all Darfur's population to back new talks.

Displaced Darfuris refused to meet Salim in the camps, but a few came to meet him in the town.

Despite the opposition Salim encountered, the message was mostly positive and clear. Residents want peace and security, and they want Nur to join a peace process that is expected to include talks with the government in the coming months.

"I call on Abdel Wahed to join the peace process," said Ibrahim Ahmed, from an environmental group in Darfur.

"He has to unify his position with the other factions. There should not be three sides but one to sit face to face with the government," he added.

Nur refused to attend a U.N. and AU-sponsored rebel unity meeting in Tanzania earlier this month where more than a dozen groups agreed on a common platform for peace talks.

He says he wants security and an effective international peacekeeping force on the ground before he will go to talks.

His supporters in Zalengei and the surrounding camps agree on security. But they said Nur should attend talks.

"We want the international forces to come and disarm the militias but at the same time we want Abdel Wahed to go to negotiate," said Omda Zacharia Yahya Jamous, a tribal leader from the Hassa Hissa camp outside Zalengei.

Many nodded in agreement.

Almost unanimously, the leaders gathered wanted individual compensation and disarmament of all armed groups, rebels and militias, so they could return to their villages in safety.

Khartoum mobilised mainly Arab militias to quell a revolt begun by mostly non-Arab rebels in 2003 accusing central government of marginalising the arid west. Experts estimate some 200,000 have died.

Zalengei's residents said only disarmament could resolve the conflict in Darfur.

"Now there are weapons in everyone's hands, even children," said Zalengei resident Hajja el-Senoussi. Her colleague next to her wiped tears from her eyes.

"In our homes at night we canot sleep for shooting. The children and elderly cannot rest in peace," Senoussi added.

Darfur: British Minister Urges China to Help

From Reuters

China should help resolve a humanitarian crisis in Darfur as one of a few "critical players," a British minister said on Tuesday, urging the world's most populous country to be more active in global diplomacy.

Lord Malloch-Brown, on the first visit to China by a British minister since Gordon Brown took up the premiership in June, said Beijing needed to transform itself into a "strong, multilateral player."

"Trying to move on Darfur without the active involvement of China was kind of like pushing a very big rock up an extremely steep mountain, you just couldn't do it," Malloch-Brown, Britain's minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, told reporters.

While Chinese companies control some of Sudan's largest oil blocks, human rights groups accuse China of giving Khartoum financial and military aid that enables it to wage war in the Darfur region that has killed an estimated 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million.

Malloch-Brown plans to travel to Sudan in 10 days.

"I think that I go to Sudan on a much more powerful position having talked first to the authorities in Beijing, they are critical players in all of this," he added.

Despite a 2006 peace deal, some 7,000 African Union troops are struggling to keep the peace. Although large-scale fighting has largely ended, rebels and militias have fractured creating lawlessness and banditry.

Malloch-Brown suggested China should assume a bigger role alongside traditional powers like the United States in multilateral bodies such as the United Nations on issues like African development, Myanmar's political gridlock and denuclearization in North Korea.

"We want China to be a major player in the world, there is no alternative for the world but to have a responsible China sitting at the global table, helping to solve global issues."

China is beginning to flex its economic power globally -- setting up a new agency to invest its foreign reserves abroad. But the Chinese government was too timid on upholding human rights, Malloch-Brown said.

"The kind of world we want to see is one where human rights are respected universally, and an indispensable part to achieving that is that China is also willing to make that case at home and abroad."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, currently in Beijing, also urged China to press Sudan to help create peace in Darfur.

Uganda: LRA Hires Lawyers for Peace Talks/Otti Mocks ICC

From IWPR

Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army, LRA, deputy commander, Vincent Otti, has appointed three lawyers to strengthen the group’s negotiating team at peace talks with the Ugandan government.

In a satellite phone interview with IWPR from the LRA's main base in the Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, Otti said the lawyers would handle questions raised by the decision of the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague to put the LRA's leaders on trial on charges of crimes against humanity.

“Their role shall be to beef up our negotiating team on how to handle the law and any criminality issues lined up against us as we carry on with the talks," said Otti.

The rebel commander said the Ugandan lawyers would deal specifically with the arrest warrants issued by the ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

The warrants alleges that LRA chief Joseph Kony, his deputy, Otti, and commanders Okot Odiambo and Domenic Ogwen "engaged in a cycle of violence and established a pattern of brutalisation of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burnings of houses and looting of camp settlements".

An arrest warrant was issued against a fifth man, Raska Lukwiya, but he was killed in fighting last year.

The charge sheet further alleges that Kony and his men abducted civilians, including children, who forcibly “recruited” as fighters, porters and sex slaves to serve the LRA.

Otti, who comes from Atiak, a small trading post in northwest Uganda, has denied committing any atrocities in the 21-year northern Ugandan war that has pitted the LRA against Uganda's armed forces.

He said he expected the government to go to The Hague to withdraw the arrest warrants against the four commanders, following the signing of an agreement by Ugandan government and LRA representatives at the peace talks held in Juba, the capital of autonomous south Sudan.

“Unfortunately, we are not seeing this. But we are committed to the peace talks,” he said.

The Ugandan government and LRA rebels signed a truce aimed at ending a 19-year conflict last year.

An agreement on accountability and reconciliation - the third item on the agenda at peace talks was signed in June. It concerns the possibility of using local justice mechanisms to prosecute those suspected of committing war crimes on both sides of the war.

“I am ready to face prosecution in Uganda," he told IWPR. "However, I am 100 per cent sure that I have not committed any crime at all.”

During the interview, Otti repeated his earlier arguments that the ICC arrest warrants against the LRA's top commanders represent a major stumbling block to the peace process. The moment the ICC arrest warrants are lifted, he said, the rebels will quickly move out of their guerrilla bases.

“As soon as they are removed, I will be on the move to Uganda immediately. I will go to my village, then to Gulu [northern Uganda's biggest town], then Kampala,” he said.

“If the ICC indictments are not lifted, we shall remain in the bush.”

The LRA fled to Garamba from their former bases in southern Sudan in late 2004.

Otti's resolve to return to Uganda via Atiak will likely send tremors of fear through the population of the settlement.

On April 20, 1995, an LRA force led by Otti mounted a major offensive against Atiak and defeated Ugandan government troops stationed there.

According to accounts by the Justice and Reconciliation Project, JRP, Otti's guerrillas rounded up hundreds of men, women and children and force-marched them to the banks of a nearby river. JRP, together with Ker Kwaro Acholi, the cultural institution representing the Acholi people of northern Uganda, has been conducting research to promote reconciliation through traditional methods after the conflict.

There they were separated into two groups, mainly according to their sex.

After being harangued for their alleged collaboration with the Ugandan government, witnesses interviewed by the JRP say Otti ordered his soldiers to open fire three times on a group of an estimated 300 civilian men and boys, who all died.

Otti is then said to have turned to the women and girls and remaining young boys and ordered them to applaud the LRA’s work. Before leaving, Otti and the guerrillas are said to have selected a number of girls to march with them to become LRA porters and "wives".

A female survivor of what has become known as the Atiak Massacre said, "They fired at the [300 selected] people first and then again for the second time to ensure that they are all dead… My first-born child, mother-in-law, father-in-law and my husband were all killed and I watched them die. I returned with four children whom I am struggling to take care of now."

Otti, in an earlier interview with IWPR, said he is even prepared to travel to The Hague to face charges at the ICC - on condition that the court’s prosecutors also indict government soldiers from the Uganda People's Defence Force, the UPDF.

"If the UPDF are included on the list of indicted commanders, I will definitely go to The Hague. Short of that, I will never go. It’s not only the LRA alone who committed atrocities in northern Uganda. It’s both the LRA and the UPDF. Why did the ICC indict us alone?” he said.

The 4920 square kilometre Garamba National Park, where Kony, Otti and the LRA's other top leaders have their guerrilla headquarters, is in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The LRA army fled there in late 2004 from their former bases in southern Sudan. The Garamba's vast grasslands, savannahs and forests are a UNESCO World Heritage site and form the last refuge in the wild of the critically endangered northern race of the African White Rhino.

The rhinos have been heavily poached by the LRA and other marauders. At the last count, only five of the animals remained, down from an estimated 1200 in 1960, meaning the species is almost certainly doomed to extinction.

Also from IWPR

The international justice system works to silence opponents of bad governments while exercising leniency and indulgence towards executive state presidents and prime ministers who themselves are suspected of committing war crimes, the leadership of Uganda’s rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, has alleged in an interview with IWPR.

“No government leader in power has been arrested or tried” in international tribunals, said LRA commander Vincent Otti, who himself is the target of an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the fledgling International Criminal Court, ICC, based in The Hague.

Speaking by satellite phone from the LRA’s guerrilla headquarters, deep in the bush of the 5000-square-kilometre Garamba National Park, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Otti told IWPR, “If this institution [the ICC] is really designed to try anybody suspected of crimes against humanity, then it should also be trying the Ugandan People’s Defence Force.”

The UPDF, the armed forces of the government of Uganda, and the LRA have been locked in a 21-year-long civil war in northern Uganda that has seen more than 100,000 people die, some 1.7 million people uprooted from their homes and made internal refugees, and an estimated 38,000 children aged as young as seven and eight years abducted by the rebels to serve as guerrilla fighters, porters and sex slaves.

“Thomas Lubanga was arrested because he was suspected of being a rebel, but if he had been the president of a country he would not be behind bars now in a European prison,” said Otti, who is deputy to the LRA leader Joseph Kony.

Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, leader of an ethnic Hema militia in the heavily-forested, mineral-rich Ituri region of the Congo, was placed in custody by the Congo government and transferred to an ICC prison in the capital of the Netherlands in March 2006. Proceedings against 46-year-old Lubanga are going forward with glacial speed. A preliminary hearing will be heard in The Hague only on September 4, eighteen months after Lubanga’s arrest: that hearing will deal only with pre-trial issues, and there is no clarity when a full trial will begin.

Lubanga is specifically charged with recruiting children under the age of fifteen to fight as guerrilla soldiers. In the five years of operation of the ICC, staffed by some 600 international civil servants, Lubanga is the only person the court has so far managed to arrest.

Human Rights Watch, the New York-based international human rights organisation, has been pushing ICC prosecutors to investigate the involvement of the Ugandan and Rwandan governments in the Ituri conflict for several years, arguing that the various Ituri militias have been armed and financed by outside groups with an interest in the Congo’s mineral and forest wealth.

The LRA, which has been involved in peace talks with the Ugandan government for more than a year, has said it will not agree to a final settlement unless ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo withdraws indictments against Kony, Otti and other rebel leaders. Moreno-Ocampo’s 23-page charge sheet alleges that the LRA leaders "engaged in a cycle of violence and established a pattern of brutalisation of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burnings of houses and looting of camp settlements".

The charge sheet further alleges that Kony and his men abducted civilians, including children, who were forcibly “recruited” as fighters, porters and sex slaves to serve the LRA.

Otti demonstrated his own confusion about who exactly in The Hague is issuing the warrant for his own arrest and that of others when he said, “If [Ugandan president Yoweri] Museveni left power today he would be arrested by the ICJ tomorrow.”

The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations, and has operated in The Hague since 1946, resolving legal disputes between sovereign states, not between individuals. It is confused over and over again with the ICC - that began work only in 2002 and focuses on war crimes and crimes against humanity by individuals - and which seeks Otti’s arrest.

Otti alleged that Museveni would only ever face potential prosecution by an international court when he steps down from political power. “He will then find himself behind bars in The Hague to answer crimes against the people of Uganda who were killed in the Luwero Triangle when Museveni was a bush fighter, like us, fighting the then established government he overthrew,” said Otti.

Northern Ugandans allege that as far back as the Eighties, Museveni's then rebel group, the southern-dominated National Resistance Army, NRA, was responsible for human rights abuses during the war against the government of the then president Milton Obote. In Museveni’s 1981-86 guerrilla war, tens of thousands of people were killed in the Luwero Triangle, an area to the northwest of Kampala, the Ugandan capital, where NRA rebels were deeply entrenched.

The LRA revolt is in part the consequence of historic tensions between the ethnic Nilotic tribes of northern Uganda and the Bantu tribes of the south. Each has established national dominance at different times, often by force and sometimes through the ballot box.

In his interview with IWPR, Otti blamed the UPDF for the “Barlonyo massacre” of February 21, 2004, when LRA guerrillas were widely reported to have attacked an internal refugee camp of that name, near the northern town of Lira, and killed more than 300 people while abducting others and burning every building to the ground.

Otti claimed to IWPR that the Barlonyo attack was in fact carried out by Ugandan government soldiers, whose officers subsequently placed the blame on the LRA. “The UPDF,” he said, “has a habit of wearing rags and then hitting people in the IDP (internally displaced persons) camps. Then they go and put their uniforms back on to put out UPDF propaganda [alleging LRA responsibility].”

However, Bosco Okello, who was present at the Barlonyo attack and was abducted as a young child that day by the LRA, recently escaped from the rebels and returned home. "I didn't know what to think when I first came back," said Bosco, now aged 16. On February 21, 2004, before he was taken away to an LRA camp, he helplessly watched the rebels execute his own brother. Okello is now trying to find work on construction projects to support his parents - neither of whom can walk because they were shot in the legs on that same date - and his younger brother and sister.

Before severing the satellite phone call from the Garamba, Otti warned that peace talks in Juba, South Sudan, between the Ugandan government and the LRA would fail if Museveni did not move quickly to demand that the court in The Hague drop its charges against the LRA.

He threw out a challenge to the ICC, which has no police force of its own, “to come and arrest me if it thinks it can do so”, and said terms used by Museveni such as “terrorists” to describe the LRA “are propaganda to intimidate the oppressed minority groups that are fighting for their rights”.

DRC: Rebel Ambush Kills 4 Soldiers

From Reuters

Four government soldiers were killed in eastern Congo by fighters loyal to a renegade general in the latest in a series of attacks threatening a fragile eight-month truce, the army said on Tuesday.

Security officials from Con