The signing of a Ugandan deal to end 20 years of war was postponed in chaos on Friday as government delegates quit, the rebel negotiator resigned and fugitive Joseph Kony failed to show.
The planned ceremony on the remote Sudan-Congo border looked delayed for at least days after the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) admitted that commander Kony, who is hiding from an international arrest warrant, was nowhere in sight.
“We came yesterday for the signing of a final peace agreement with Joseph Kony. He did not show up as expected,” Ugandan Internal Affairs Minister and chief government negotiator Ruhakana Rugunda told reporters at Ri-Kwangba.
“We are going back until we are advised by the [Sudanese] mediator on what to do,” Rugunda said.
The minister said a ceremony for the Ugandan president to ink the peace deal in the southern Sudan capital of Juba tomorrow had been delayed.
He cast doubt on whether the government would extend a ceasefire agreement with the LRA that expires on Wednesday, despite both government and rebel negotiators being at pains to stress that talks were “progressing.”
“Unless the conditions significantly change, the government of Uganda has no plans of signing this extension,” Rugunda said.
The chief mediator, southern Sudan Vice President Riek Machar, said Kony requested further consultations before signing on Friday.
But by afternoon, the Ugandan government delegation and the chief LRA negotiator, who were staying at a muddy UN-run tent compound with the Sudanese mediators and journalists, had left the jungle town of Ri-Kwangba.
The chief negotiator for the LRA, David Matsanga, announced his resignation.
“There is no sign of Joseph Kony. I learned that he is around this country but it may take him seven days to come,” Matsanga told reporters.
His acting replacement, James Obita, attributed the chaos to a breakdown in communication between the rebel commander and Matsanga.
“He [Kony] says he is committed to the peace process and committed to signing a peace agreement. The only problem was the breakdown in communication with the chief negotiator Matsanga,” Obita told reporters.
He listed a barrage of excuses: Kony intended to meet tribal elders on Thursday and sign the deal days later; Kony took fright because of journalists and diplomats; Kony was under pressure from his commanders over the future.
The LRA gave no new date but said leaders from northern Uganda, which bore the brunt of the war, and Sudanese mediators would stay on in Ri-Kwangba until they had sorted out Kony’s concerns on the implications of the peace deal.
The tent compound, where the mediators, the LRA and Ugandan government teams had stayed, turned to mud on Friday as heavy rain fell after dark.
The LRA is notorious for having raped and mutilated civilians, forcibly enlisted child soldiers and massacred thousands during what has been one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts.
Kony is in hiding to avoid arrest following a warrant from the International Criminal Court.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS