Frank Nyakairu
20 March 2008
Kampala — Just days after relocating to neighbouring Central African Republic, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader, Joseph Kony, has established contact with Chad's main rebel leader, Gen Mahamat Nouri, information available to the Daily Monitor says.
This new development greatly reduces hopes that a peace deal to end a 21-year civil war will be signed on March 28.
Kampala had given the LRA commander until March 28 to sign the agreement. In return, the government would call for the International Criminal Court to drop arrest warrants for Kony and two of his deputies.
However, different sources collaborating this development told the Daily Monitor that Kony could be headed for the Sudan-Chad border, where Nouri's Union Force for Democracy and Development (UFDD) has bases.
"Kony is now 50 miles inside the Central African Republic and is with Chadian rebel Mahamat Nouri," a knowledgeable source who requested anonymity told the Daily Monitor. However, the Monitor could not readily verify this information.
Mr Kony's action comes only days after the Monitor reported that he had moved from his forested Garamba hide-out in the northeast Democratic Republic of Congo to a base in the Central African Republic bordering Chad.
The Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) on Wednesday warned that Kony's leaving Garamba was tantamount to a breach of the truce. "Kony has shifted most of his troops to the CAR, and that is already a blatant breach of the cessation of hostilities agreement and if he fails to come out and sign the peace deal, he will have proved to the world that peace is not his priority," said Major Paddy Ankunda, the defence and army spokesman.
He said the UPDF was still "trying to ascertain Kony's whereabouts".
But another source told the Daily Monitor that the government had reached the conclusion that "Kony is repositioning himself, and a major player is backing him".
Earlier intelligence reports indicated that Kony's advance forces were headed north of Obo town in the CAR towards the border with Chad. The Ugandan warlord was backed by the Khartoum government at one time, but Sudan's President Omar el Bashir said such support stopped in 2001.
Chadian rebels led by Gen Nouri have been battling President Idriss Déby's Government. Last month, his group took control of large parts of the capital, N'Djamena, but lost it when French forces intervened.
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