Mbabazi, Sudan Assess Kony War

By Emmy AllioDefence minister Amama Mbabazi and his Sudanese counterpart Gen. Bakri Hassan Saleh have held talks in Khartoum in which they reviewed UPDF’s “Iron Fist” operation against Kony rebels inside Sudan.The meeting, which took place over the weekend, also considered possibilities of further co-operation to speed up operations against the Lords’s Resistance Army whose estimated 1,000 fighters are reportedly surrounded in the Imotong mountains at the Uganda-Sudan border. Army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza said the two ministers will meet again very “soon to accomplish their mission.”“The meeting of the defence ministers aims at speeding up UPDF success against the rebels,” Bantariza said. Mbabazi is also the military assistant to Mbabazi.Sudan last month extended for 45 days the UPDF deadline to flush out Kony from inside its borders.Under the terms of the March agreement, the ministers were to meet regularly to review the protocol.The LRA, led by self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony, has been fighting the Ugandan army in northern Uganda since 1987. Kony wants to found a state based on the Bible’s 10 commandments.Army sources said Kony and his fighters have been denied external assistance and are surrounded by the UPDF on the forested Imotong. “We know that they (the rebels) grabbed a lot of food from the Sudanese civilians whom they killed and forced to flee, but they will soon run out of stock. That is when we shall get them,” a UPDF source said yesterday. Operating from bases in southern Sudan, the rebels have abducted at least 12,000 children and displaced hundreds of people and brought the region’s economy to a standstill.The acting army commander, Maj. Gen. James Kazini, recently told the press that the army had already flushed Kony out of his camps near Juba.Kampala and Khartoum signed an agreement on March 10 allowing Ugandan troops to carry out search-and-destroy operations against the rebels who launch cross-border raids from rear bases in southern Sudan.The United States declared the LRA a terrorist organisation following the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.Kony is said to have requested for peace talks with the Government recently but the army insists he should surrender or die.Ends