Uganda, Sudan mend ties

UGANDA and Sudan have agreed to start the process of normalising diplomatic relations under the 1999 Nairobi Accord in a new peace deal brokered by the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Gadaffi, report John Eremu and Agencies. Under the deal, Sudanese president Omar El Bashir was invited and is expected in the country to attend today's swearing-in ceremony of President Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's foreign ministry said in a statement yesterday. Uganda and Sudan severed diplomatic ties in April 1995, but signed a normalisation agreement four years later. However, implementation of the agreement has been marred by accusations that each country is backing rebels against the other. Gadaffi, who jetted into the country yesterday, was on Thursday in Khartoum where he met Bashir and discussed the role Tripoli could play in normalising the strained Sudanese-Ugandan relations. Uganda's foreign ministry said under the new arrangement, Kampala will immediately accredit two liaison officers to Khartoum. "These diplomats will be operating out of the Embassy of the Republic of Kenya to Khartoum," the statement said. "Similarly, Sudan will accredit two liaison officers in Kampala, who will in turn be operating out of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya," the statement added. Under the 1999 Nairobi Accord, Uganda and Sudan were supposed to stop harbouring dissidents against each other's government. They were also expected to release all the Prisoners of War (PoWs) and any persons held in captivity in their countries. Consequently, Uganda released Sudanese PoWs while Sudan was expected to secure the release of all children, including the Aboke girls held by Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army rebels in southern Sudan. Although a number of children have been returned, the Aboke girls are yet to be released. Gadaffi also discussed with Bashir an Egyptian - Libyan peace initiative aimed at reconciling the Khartoum government with the opposition groups and to reactivate agreements between the two countries. Egypt and Libya launched in 1999, a bid to end Sudan's civil war between the ruling Arab north and rebels based in the mainly animist and Christian south. Ends