Four stories from Wednesday that are related to, most recently, Tuesday night's SAPA/AFP item (updated originally both to add the one from IRIN and to note that the BBC site also has an accompanying new profile of Joseph Kony; updated further to add the first one from VOA; updated still further, on Thursday, to add the second one from VOA):
From the BBC...
The International Criminal Court says its arrest warrant for the leader of Uganda's northern rebels still stands despite a Ugandan offer of an amnesty.
On Tuesday, President Yoweri Museveni promised to grant Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony amnesty if peace talks next week are successful.
Mr Kony and four others were indicted by the ICC for war crimes last year.
The talks between the government and rebels are considered northern Uganda's best chance for peace in years.
They are scheduled to take place next week in the southern Sudanese town of Juba, and will be mediated by the south Sudan regional government.
In a recent BBC interview, Mr Kony denied the LRA had carried out atrocities, particularly on children.
Thousands have died in the two-decade conflict between rebels and the government, and some two million have been forced to flee their homes.
Welcomed
"The position of the court up till now is that these warrants of arrest remain in force and the court has received assurances from the relevant countries that they will co-operate in effecting these warrants of arrest," the ICC's spokesman Ernest Sagaga told the BBC's Network Africa programme.
When asked if the ICC would withdraw the arrest warrants in the interests of peace, Mr Sagaga said he was unable to comment on this, saying to would be "premature to do so".
He said as the court did not have its own army or police force, member countries were obliged and expected to co-operate with the court.
Even though the south Sudan and Ugandan government were planning to meet the rebels, he said: "We have no reason not to believe what they said to the court that their co-operation will be forthcoming regarding this matter."
'Abandon terrorism'
The BBC's East Africa correspondent, Karen Allen, says the latest stance taken by President Museveni is bound to enrage many in the international community.
But a senior church leader in the Acholi region welcomed the move.
"Forgiveness is always a virtue and a value to be very much promoted nationwide and internationally," the Archbishop of Gulu, John Baptist Odama, told the BBC.
He said despite the horrors that rebels had carried out, those who returned from the bush and asked for forgiveness were accepted back into the communities.
"Revenge should not be seen as justice."
"I have seen people live with those who have returned and they know they killed their children, they even greet them. I think that is magnanimity of the heart."
Earlier, Mr Museveni's office said in a statement that it would grant the amnesty if the rebel leader "responds positively to the talks... and abandons terrorism", despite the ICC indictments.
The statement comes a week after the BBC's Newsnight programme broadcast an interview with the elusive Joseph Kony, in which he described himself as a "freedom fighter".
He said stories of LRA rebels cutting off people's ears or lips were Ugandan government propaganda.
From IRIN...
President Yoweri Museveni has offered the leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) an amnesty for crimes committed in northern Uganda, but the International Criminal Court (ICC), which indicted him, insists the insurgent must be arrested.
"The governments of Uganda, Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo are obligated to give effect to the arrest warrants, and we are confident that they will honour their joint commitment to do so," Christian Palme, the acting ICC spokesperson, told IRIN on Wednesday.
Apart from LRA leader Joseph Kony, the other indictees are LRA commanders Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen and Raska Lukwiya. According to the ICC, each is charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes, committed in Uganda since July 2002, in the context of a 20-year campaign of brutality against civilians.
Museveni on Tuesday pledged to grant Kony total amnesty if the rebel leader responded positively to peace talks due to open in southern Sudan next week.
"The Ugandan government will grant total amnesty [to Kony] despite the International Criminal Court indictments if he responds positively to the talks with the government in Juba, southern Sudan, and abandons terrorism," Museveni’s office said in a statement.
Saying he would not respond to international pressure to have the rebel leader, whom he likened to Adolf Hitler, arrested, the president blamed the international community for failure to cooperate with him in his war against the LRA.
"To hand over Kony after he has come out himself; that’s out," Museveni told Walter Kälin, the UN Secretary General’s Representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons.
Criticising the UN, Museveni claimed that the "noble cause of trying Kony before the ICC had been betrayed by the failure of the United Nations, which set up the court, to arrest him, despite knowing his location in DR Congo’s Garamba National Park."
The UN system would, he added, therefore have no moral authority to demand Kony stand trial after failing to arrest him for the nine months he has been in the Congo, and even killed UN troops. "I am sending my people to talk to Kony because I have no partners [on arresting him]," he said.
He said his latest gesture to the rebels blamed for a number of atrocities was "to assist the SPLA [southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army] government. We don’t want to put burdens on the young government of southern Sudan," he said.
Archbishop John Baptist Odama, of the Gulu Roman Catholic diocese, at the centre of Kony’s 20-year-old conflict, described Museveni’s announcement as "positive because it encourages peace negotiations to go on".
Odama added: "We know that people suffered in the war, but this should be decided in other fora. People with grievances will come out and express them to the relevant authorities after we have achieved peace. We hope the ICC does not interfere with the peace process going on in the Sudan because we want the people of northern Uganda to see peace."
However, the president of the Uganda Law Society, Deo Nkuzingoma, said the announcement presented a tricky legal situation, although the most important issue now was to achieve total peace in northern Uganda.
"If talks can achieve peace in the whole country so that northern Uganda could be part of the development process, then let it be," Nkuzingoma said. "Indicting Kony will not bring peace and the way I understand what the president has done is to bring him on board so that talks can progress."
Gulu district chairman and lawyer Norbert Mao said the Ugandan government should be prepared to make its case before the United Nations Security Council – the only forum that could change the course of the ICC.
"I am confused because it was Museveni who brought the ICC and it is he who brought an amendment to exclude Kony and the indicted commanders from the amnesty law. The government must be consistent and this does not show consistence," he added.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and some two million displaced in northern Uganda since the LRA took over leadership of a regional rebellion in 1988 in a bid to oust Museveni, sparking what the UN and other humanitarian groups have described as the world’s most brutal and forgotten conflict.
In a rare media interview released last week, Kony denied he was a terrorist and renewed his call for peace talks with Museveni’s government. "I’m a freedom fighter who is fighting for freedom in Uganda. I am not a terrorist," Kony told The Times of London newspaper.
The LRA purports to be fighting to replace Museveni’s government with one based on the 10 Commandments, but has become better known for atrocities, particularly kidnapping an estimated 25,000 children, mostly girls to be sex slaves and boys as fighters.
International criminal authorities say the warrant for the arrest of Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony stands, despite the offer of amnesty by President Yoweri Museveni. Kony, who has led almost two decades of bloody insurgency against the government as leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, is charged by the International Criminal Court with war crimes and human rights violations.
Uganda President Yoweri Museveni's offer to of full amnesty is in direct defiance to warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the rebel leader's arrest on 33 charges of war crimes and human rights abuses.
The court said the outstanding warrant for Kony's arrest is still in force and it expects ICC member countries to cooperate in arresting him.
It was President Museveni who originally invited the Court to investigate Kony. Uganda is a member of the ICC.
But government spokesman Robert Kabushenga says the need for peace with Kony and his group is of the greatest importance for the Ugandan people.
"If he comes out of the bush with his group and abandons his acts of terrorism he will have full amnesty," said Kabushenga. "This is an offer that has been made and if he responds than the Ugandan government will be committed to upholding that amnesty. So the most overriding thing now is to try and get peace for our country."
The government and rebels are engaged in talks mediated by Sudan Vice President Salva Kiir in the southern Sudanese city of Juba.
The Ugandan People's Defense Force has stated its support for the government position. The military says Uganda's government was left with few alternatives but to negotiate, after the Lord's Resistance Army took refuge in the Garamba national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
"The government of Uganda decided to offer amnesty to Kony because of lack of partners in the region on the LRA problem. The LRA [Lord's Resistance Army] has been in Congo, the Congo government has not bothered to get rid of the LRA The U.N. that is in the Congo has not helped us on the problem," said Major Felix Kulayigye, the spokesman for the Ugandan Peoples Defense Force. "But should the LRA indeed meet the conditions, obviously we shall scale down operations."
Mr. Museveni's offer of full amnesty is the strongest indication yet of Ugandan's commitment to the talks.
Several peace deals between the Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government have failed in the past, with both sides accused of being uncommitted to peace.
If the current talks are successful they could see an end to 18 years of war in Northern Uganda in which the Lord's Resistance Army and Ugandan People's Defense Force have been accused of committing atrocities.
The conflict has seen tens of thousands of casualties, more than one million people displaced from their homes and 30,000 children abducted to fight as soldiers and serve as sex slaves.
The International Criminal Court says its arrest warrant for the leader of the Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army remains in place, despite an offer of amnesty made by Ugandan government.
In what appears to be a reversal of policy, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has promised amnesty for rebel leader Joseph Kony if peace talks set for next week go well.
On Tuesday, Kony - who has waged nearly two decades of brutal war in northern Uganda - was also promised a presidential pardon if he abandons what Mr. Museveni called "terrorism."
But the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants last year against Kony and five top associates on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Court Spokesman Ernest Sagaga says the arrest warrants will remain in place, despite the latest developments.
"I think there are two things that one has to distinguish," said Ernest Sagaga. "There is a peace process between Ugandans and a judicial process before the ICC [the International Criminal Court]. Now, the ICC has no part to play in the peace process. And therefore I cannot comment; not on the context, not on the details on the peace process that is about to start among Ugandans."
But there has been criticism among observers, diplomats, and some Ugandans that the warrants set back efforts to get peace talks going by sending the rebel leaders on the run.
ICC spokesman Sagaga denies the courts' actions hurt prospects for a peace settlement.
"But I think if what you look at what the court has done ever since the prosecutor began the investigation into Uganda, the court has been and is very much mindful of the context in Uganda," he said. "And I think that every effort has been made to reach out to all players in that country. However, the only thing we can do is what is allowed under the mandate of the court."
A researcher for the International Crisis Group in Washington, Colin-Thomas Jensen, says this most recent attempt to end the war in northern Uganda is in its early stages and that very little is known about the will of Kony or President Museveni to settle the conflict. He says it makes sense the ICC would maintain its position to arrest Uganda's alleged war criminals.
But Thomas-Jensen says one of the biggest problems for the court is that its arrest warrants were issued in a vacuum.
"That is, there was very little ground work put into exactly how those warrants were going to be executed," said Colin-Thomas Jensen. "Now, that is not the fault of the court. The court is a mechanism for dispensing justice. It does not have a special forces unit that can nab its indictees. It relies on its supporters and the will of the international community. As we saw in Uganda, the warrants were issued and yet there was very little response or plan from the international community on how those warrants were be executed."
Thomas-Jensen says it is too early to know why the Museveni government suddenly decided to offer amnesty after vowing to cooperate with the ICC.
"His motivations to many people who follow the situation are not quite clear yet," he said. "But certainly there is a lot of public pressure in northern Uganda to deal with LRA and the war and there is a lot of pressure from the government of southern Sudan. The southern Sudanese in their visits with the U.S. government have made very clear that dealing the LRA is a serious problem and is undermining the Comprehensive Peace Agreement [with Khartoum]. And so mild pressure from the U.S. and those pressures have been pushing him towards coming up with a solution; something that can actually end the conflict."
There may also be a third party solution whereby Kony would agree to end the war and be transferred to a country that has not signed onto the International Criminal Court.
But as the two sides prepare for next week's talks - mediated by the government of southern Sudan - the 19-year war in northern Uganda is not over. More than one million northern Ugandans remain displaced and living in camps and children live in fear of rebel abduction.
Comments