LRA terminate negotiating team

LRA terminate negotiating team
Sunday 11 January 2009 04:20.

January 10, 2009 (PARIS) – A statement purporting to come from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the cultic guerrilla force that negotiated during two years with Kampala without siging the final peace deal, announced the immediate termination of its negotiating team.

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LRA negotiator David Nyekorach-Matsanga

The LRA ended all contacts with David Matsanga, Miss Abalo and Justine Labeja. Matsanga had already once before been dismissed by LRA leader Joseph Kony before allowing him to resume his activities.

Rebel leaders of the group have drawn support from the aggrieved ethnic Acholis of northern Uganda, but have primarily preyed on this ethnic group as well, abducting children and making them kill their families.

Matsanga had even previously in July 2008 been accused of plotting Kony’s death. The UK-based negotiator was arrested in South Sudan in April 2008 carrying a letter from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to Kony and $20,000.

It is not clear that Matsanga would currently have any ease in contacting Kony at this point anyway. Kony’s forces have been driven to part of Garamba National Park in northeastern DR Congo, where they were attacked in late December.

The assault, carried out by air and with the coordination of Uganda, South Sudan and DR Congo, resulted in reprisals across Congo and into Western Equatoria of Sudan.

The rebel fighters are low on ammunition and are not all armed with firearms, but they are specialists in jungle warfare and many have been fighting for very long.

The supposedly LRA statement noted, that the negotiators’ removal “means they no longer speak for LRA, or peace talk negotiating delegates and must not engage in any form of negotiations.”

“The decision was reached in support for peaceful end to the conflicts in Uganda and the Great lakes Region,” claimed the text.

“This ruling is also communicated to United Nations, African Union, Non-governmental Organisations, UN appointed delegate Mr Chissano, President Joseph Kabila Republic du Congo, President of Republic of Kenya, Government of Southern Sudan President Kiir, President of Central African Republic, Uganda Government and international observers.”

(ST)