The spokesperson of the LRA says the International Criminal Court’s warrant of arrest of LRA leader, Joseph Kony, and three of his senior commanders should not be used to block the peace process. Obonyo Olweny who is currently leading the LRA peace delegation in Juba says the ICC can still pursue their options after the conflict has been resolved through dialogue, the Sudan Radio Service (SRS) reported. He says that it’s not only Kony and his senior commanders who are fighting the Ugandan government but there are other opposition forces. Read more at The Sudan Tribune.

Uganda poured scorn on Thursday on claims by Joseph Kony in a rare interview that he is innocent of war crimes, but said it would still send ministers to investigate the possibility of peace talks. Government spokesman Robert Kabushenga said Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda and Henry Oryem Okello, a junior foreign minister, would visit south Sudan's capital with security officials at the end of this week or early next. "Once they have met Kiir, they will advise Kampala on whether to expand the mission into a delegation to meet the LRA," Kabushenga said. Read more at Reuters AlertNet.

President Museveni has finally accepted the possibility of sending a delegation to talk peace with LRA representatives. Speaking in an exclusive interview with the Daily Monitor on Tuesday, the President said he was sending a team to Juba to explore possibilities of talking to Kony. "We are sending a team to Southern Sudan on the invitation of H.E. Salva Kiir, first to do the preliminaries and then we can talk to those terrorists," Museveni said. Read more at The Daily Monitor.

Uganda has been formally invited by the government of southern Sudan to attend peace talks with the LRA. "The invitation has been sent to us and we are preparing to send a technical team to meet with [southern Sudan's] President Salva Kiir and also sort out issues to do with the format of the talks, the agenda, the composition of delegations, and other procedural issues," said James Mugume, the permanent secretary in the Ugandan foreign ministry. Mugume denied reports that Kampala was not keen on reaching a peaceful settlement with the LRA. Read more at the UN's IRIN News.

President Yoweri Museveni yesterday chaired a National Security Committee meeting that discussed the proposed peace talks with the LRA. "I am sure a position to send a delegation to Juba for talks with LRA is the main point on the agenda," a source said. The source said Uganda wants LRA rebels to disarm before it considers sending a delegation to Juba for talks. The LRA apparently wants the Government to ask the ICC to withdraw charges against Kony and his commanders, share cabinet portfolios with the Movement government and release all LRA fighters who were captured by the UPDF. Read more at The New Vision.

Uganda is willing to enter into talks with the LRA rebels, but is still "sorting out issues" surrounding the talks, a senior foreign affairs official said Tuesday. The government has received an invitation to peace talks from the southern Sudanese authorities. "The invitation has been sent to us but we are sorting out some issues before we send a technical team to the talks," James Mugume, foreign affairs permanent secretary, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur by telephone. Analysts are saying, however, that Uganda is reluctant to meet the LRA leadership because it does not trust the initiator of the talks, Southern Sudan's Vice-President Riek Machar. Read more at ReliefWeb.

Former LRA spokesman Sam Kolo and former LRA master-planner Kenneth Banya have expressed doubt that rebel leader Joseph Kony is serious about negotiating a peace settlement with the Uganda Government. "Kony coming seriously to these peace talks is a dream," Kolo said. "Kony has no strong political will. He is an opportunist who wants to strike gold. Peacemaking is the new money making, it is a business," Kolo adds. However, there is reason to believe that both Banya and Kolo are compromised by their involvement with the government. Kolo recently testified against opposition candidate Kizza Besigye in a treason trial. Further, on the ground in Uganda, it is not just the political will of Kony and the LRA that is being questioned. Many local leaders are questioning why the Government of Uganda has not yet dispatched a delegation to Juba to engage peace talks.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that peace talks between the government and LRA could begin as early as this week. Local leaders are cautiously optimistic that these talks could finally draw the war to an end. Local leaders have called on the ICC to provide space and flexibility for this opportunity for peace to be fully engaged. "Peace has a higher value than anything else," says Norbert Mao, a top local government official. "I believe in the [ICC]. It is a great thing. But the chief prosecutor's mother is not in a displaced-persons camp.... We are grappling with, and living, a difficult reality." Read more at The Christian Science Monitor.

As the profiles of the 15 appointed by Joseph Kony as negotiators continue to be unveiled, The New Vision reports that one is an employee of the British aid agency, Oxfam, working in Juba. Sunday Ochaya is originally from Kitgum district in the north. Read more at The New Vision.

The mandate of the team appointed by President Yoweri Museveni two years ago to negotiate with the LRA rebels has expired. The presidential peace team led by internal affairs minister, Ruhakana Rugunda, has no powers to conduct negotiations on behalf of the government at present, a senior official has revealed. Government sources said for the peace team to be active in the talks to take place in Juba, Museveni has to sign an instrument energizing their mandate. Read more at The Monitor.

Riek Machar, vice president of southern Sudan, has said that more than 90% of LRA rebels have left their refuge in Sudan, showing that his mediation strategies have been a success. Machar said LRA fighters had crossed into the DR Congo, but U.N. and Congolese officials in Kinshasa said they had no evidence of that. Machar said his administration’s attempts to mediate an end to the conflict have been stalled because the Ugandan government has not sent negotiators to Juba. Yet, in Kampala on Thursday, Ugandan Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Felix Kulayigye said, "We are waiting for Southern Sudanese authorities to tell us 'Conditions are right, so come.'" He did not elaborate on the required conditions, but added, "Nothing is holding us back, except the final communication from Juba." Read more at The Sudan Tribune.

Top Ugandan government officials are doubting the credibility of the LRA delegation in Juba to negotiate a peace deal. Deputy State Minister for Foreign Affairs Henry Oryem Okello yesterday said the government encourages the mediation efforts of Dr. Riek Machar, but will only speak to a genuine LRA delegation. "Once he [Machar] softens the situation and is dealing with the right people, we can send a team to Juba," a government source said.

The current LRA delegation in Juba named by Kony includes Crispus Ayena Odong, a Kampala lawyer and a confessed NRM supporter who contested but lost the race for deputy Secretary General of the NRM party. The secretary to the defense ministry and later secretary of the military commission of Tito Okello’s military junta, Col. Wilson Owiny, is further on the LRA list. Also on the list is Rock Okidi, a Uganda-turned US citizen, from New York. Okidi has been at the center of controversy between Uganda and the US. Read more at The New Vision.

William Bionx Akena, Uganda-CAN news correspondent in Gulu, reports -

In an interview this morning, the leader of Muslims in Gulu, Shiek Musa Khelil applauded efforts to establish a peace process between the Government of Uganda and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). He said, "A lot of blood has been lost already...it is about time that the Government of Uganda brought an end to this untold suffering of the people of Acholiland." He further said that everyone is a stakeholder in this peace process.

Riek Machar, south Sudan's vice-president, told Reuters on Tuesday the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) should publicly endorse his government's peace initiative with the LRA. "If the ICC came out to say that they would give the peace process a chance before the legal process is done, then we would resolve the conflict in the region," Machar said. "If they did that, they would give the peace process a big boost, it would assist the Ugandan government to boldly say 'we are going to negotiate'," he said. Machar said Switzerland had agreed to support his initiative, adding the Netherlands and Italy also appeared ready to assist. Read more at Reuters AlertNet.

Crispus Ayena Odong, a Kampala lawyer, is among the 15-man delegation LRA rebel leader Joseph Kony appointed last week to represent the LRA in peace talks in Juba. Odong, who runs Ayena Odong and Company Advocates is a former corporation secretary of National Enterprises Corporation (NEC), a trading arm of the Ministry of Defense. Riek Machar, the Vice President of Southern Sudan, further said of the delegation, "Dr Lensio Onek has also been appointed as their foreign affairs coordinator and facilitator, for the duration of the talks." Machar also reportedly said, "Kony is waiting for the response of the government on the selection of its delegation." Read more at The Monitor.

LRA spokesman Obwony Olweny has told journalists in Juba that they are optimistic that the talks with the Government of Uganda will have a positive outcome. In a rare press conference, Olweny said, "The delegation would like to state categorically that ... LRA soldiers did not attack Juba or any village nearby." Olweny wore a dark blue suit with a yellow tie, a far cry from the guerrilla fatigues of his colleagues who have roamed northern Uganda and southern Sudan for almost two decades. Read more at The New Vision.

Uganda has no immediate plans to send officials for peace talks with LRA rebels, the government said on Saturday. "We have no immediate plans to send anyone," said government spokesman Robert Kabushenga. "We have laid out our position very clearly. We cannot talk to any of the rebels who are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC)." Kabushenga said, "He is now a big problem for south Sudan. Congo is obliged to hand him over to the ICC, and MONUC is there too," he said. Read more at Reuters AlertNet, and read Uganda-CAN's statement on peace talks here.

The Ugandan government is still interested in peace talks with the LRA, Henry Oryem Okello, the State Minister for International Affairs has said. "We genuinely want to participate in the talks," Oryem said yesterday. On Thursday, Uganda at the eleventh hour informed Salva Kiir, the President of Southern Sudan that the government will not be sending a delegation to Juba for the talks as it has planned. According to Ugandan officials and the SPLA, the information which was relayed by Uganda’s consulate in Juba to Salva Kiir did not give the reason why the negotiating team was being held in Kampala. But Oryem said the government would engage in the talks on the condition that the LRA is genuine in bringing an end to the 20-year-old insurgency. “We will only deal with the genuine representatives of the LRA,” Oryem emphasized. Read more at The Daily Monitor.

According to an article in today's New Vision, the Government of Uganda will not send a delegation to Juba for talks with the LRA. This comes on the same day that The Daily Monitor reports that a government delegation is leaving for Juba. "It is absolutely impossible for us to sit and talk to people who have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and wanted by Interpol for war crimes and crimes against humanity," a senior government source said yesterday. In another development, the UPDF brigade in Sudan’s eastern Equatoria said on June 12 it hunted and killed six Kony rebels on the Juba-Torit road, southeast of Juba city. Read more at The New Vision.

The Ugandan delegation leaves today for Juba for talks with the rebel Lords Resistance Army. The government delegation, set to arrive in Juba this morning, was invited by the South Sudan President, Mr Salva Kiir. Officials at the Ugandan consulate in Juba confirmed the meeting between the LRA and the government but preferred Kampala to give an official statement. The Minister for Internal Affairs, Dr Ruhakana Rugunda said, "an appropriate authority will, at an opportune moment, issue a statement."

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, who is leading the Security Council’s visit to Africa, told reporters "the Security Council has asked for a full account of the activities of the LRA. It believes that the regional dimension of the LRA is a threat to peace and the stability of the region, and it would very much like this scourge to be eliminated." Asked whether the council wants Kony and the others arrested during peace negotiations, Jones Parry said if a political process can draw the bulk of "the more innocent" LRA victims away from the group "that’s to be encouraged." Read more at The Daily Monitor.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has insisted that new efforts to engage LRA rebels in peace negotiations will not impede the arrest and prosecution of the indicted rebel leaders. Francisca Sumay, a public information officer from the chief prosecutor's office at the ICC, told IRIN by phone from The Hague that the court expected the affected countries to take up their obligation to implement the arrest warrants issued against five LRA leaders. "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," Sumay said, citing Article 86 of the Rome Statute. Read more at Reuters AlertNet.

The UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs has faulted the Sudanese and Ugandan governments for agreeing to talk with LRA leaders accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of crimes against humanity. "Those who are indicted have been indicted because they are responsible for mass murder of the worst possible kind, and so those who are indicted should go and face justice in The Hague," said Jan Egeland on Monday. While the five indicted LRA leaders must be brought to justice, "the rest can go back to school, where most of them were kidnapped from when they became terrorised into becoming child soldiers," he told reporters. Read more at The New Vision.

The East African has published an editorial in which they write, "A little scepticism, in the circumstances, is healthy, but the prospects for peace in northern Uganda would be better served were the government to take up the rebels' offer. Better to let the LRA fail to honour their word and face the wrath of the international community than squander an opportunity to end the 19-year insurgency in the north." Read more at AllAfrica.com.

Rebel leader Joseph Kony of the LRA has named 14 negotiators that will permanently stay in the Southern Sudanese city of Juba until the proposed peace talks with the Ugandan government are concluded. Kony at a three-day weekend meeting with Riek Machar in Abi, urged Uganda to prevail upon the International Criminal Court in the Hague (Netherlands), to drop the war crimes charges against him and four of his commanders if the peace talks were to continue. Kony's anointed negotiators arrived in Juba yesterday afternoon aboard an Antonov Aircraft belonging to 748, a private airliner. According to sources in the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) - Kony appointed Dr. Lensio Onek, a resident of Magwi, in Southern Sudan to head the team. Onek is said to be an Acholi and has been in contact with the LRA for 15 years. The observers include; two Britons and two Italians. Kony's delegation also includes; five LRA rebels reportedly from Kenya, Britain and America. Read more at The Monitor.

The South Sudan vice-president, Dr. Riek Machar, on Saturday made a 300km journey to Maridi, west of the capital Juba, to consult the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, Juba sources said yesterday. They said the LRA delegation, now in Juba, is composed of the organization’s external wing representatives from the USA, London and Nairobi who flew in for talks with Machar and Sudan’s Vice-President Salva Kiir. Read more at The New Vision.

Uganda-CAN has learned that the announcement that the Government of Sudan would comply with ICC indictments to arrest Joseph Kony and three other LRA commanders referred to the government in Khartoum, not the Government of Southern Sudan that will mediate talks. Thus, while peace talks remain uncertain, they may still begin in Juba.

Efforts by authorities in southern Sudan to mediate in the conflict between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) appeared to be stalling at the weekend after Kampala refused to meet the insurgency's leadership because it had been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes. "Nobody can meet with those who are indicted," Okello Oryem, Uganda's junior foreign minister, said on Saturday. "As far as we are concerned, the LRA is a regional problem now - not a Uganda problem. Those countries in which they hide, namely South Sudan and the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo], have a responsibility to act, along with the UN forces [in Sudan]." Read more at Reuters AlertNet.

Riek Machar, deputy head of the south Sudan government, has told the London-based Al-Sharq al-Awsat that Juba, capital of the south, will host unique talks between the leaders of rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government, under Sudanese-international sponsorship. He added that the talks will begin next week. Machar said, "The talks will begin upon the arrival of the delegation of the Ugandan government, in the presence of international parties, led by Switzerland, Italy, and Norway". He said that "some European countries support his initiative to end the war," which has continued for 20 years in northern Uganda and the south of neighbouring Sudan and DR Congo. Read more at The Sudan Tribune.

The Uganda Joint Christian Council (UJCC) and the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC) have urged the Government of Uganda to embrace the initiative of Salva Kiir, First Vice-President of Sudan, to mediate in the northern Uganda conflict. They have also called upon the leadership of the LRA to take advantage of the forum offered by the Government of Southern Sudan to seek a negotiated solution to the conflict. "We appeal to the international community to support the mediation effort by the Government of Southern Sudan," they said. Read more at The New Vision.

The government peace team would like to meet people who are serious with talks not those who will be engaged in protracted peace negotiations, Okello Oryem, the minister in charge of international affairs, said on Friday. He said the southern Sudan government will lead the preliminary talks before the Ugandan side departs for Juba, southern Sudan, adding that the government is holding consultations to find out whether the rebels are genuinely interest in the talks. "It is necessary that we that we meet people who can make decision immediately and those that will not ask for continued consultations which will derail the talks," Oryem said. Read more at the Xinhua news agency.

An advance team of Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels has arrived in south Sudan’s capital of Juba to begin negotiations with the Ugandan government, Sudanese government officials said. The Vice President of Southern Sudan Riek Machar told reporters that the advance team was "for peace talks." Another source in the south Sudan government said deputy leader Vincent Otti was expected to attend the talks as the head of the LRA delegation. A Reuters witness saw around six LRA members in the RA International hotel in Juba. The source said the delegation arrived four days ago. Read more at The Sudan Tribune.

Okello Oryem, the Ugandan minister in charge of international affairs, said Tuesday that the government's peace team headed by the Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda is ready to fly to Juba in southern Sudan to start talks with LRA rebels. "We are waiting for communication from the Southern Sudan government inviting us to go and talk to the rebels. Once this is done, then we will be there," said Oryem. Read more at Xinhua news agency.

Stephen Okello, Uganda-CAN Uganda Director, writes that peace talks in northern Uganda between the LRA and Government of Uganda should be engaged in full. Military approaches to addressing the conflict have failed for the last two decades. With recent overtures by both sides and the mediation of the Government of Southern Sudan, there may be new hope for a robust process of dialogue to end the war. Click below to read Okello's most recent reflection on the situation.

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Plans are underway for peace talks between the Government of Uganda and LRA chief Joseph Kony in Juba, southern Sudan. Southern Sudan Vice-President Riek Machar said the talks would begin next week. Sudan’s Vice-President and President of Southern Sudan, Salva Kiir, said, "When we start to talk with Kony and the Government of Uganda, in a very short time, we will bring peace to northern Uganda and by that we would also bring peace to southern Sudan." Read more at The New Vision.

The New Vision has published an editorial, calling on the Government of Uganda to engage a proposal by six prominent Acholi in the diaspora that Kony surrender to the UN and be tried by the ICC in Uganda with traditional Acholi mediators. They write, "This compromise proposal is worthy of debate. It is time for the war to end once and for all." Read the whole editorial at The New Vision.