Britain Wants Peacekeepers for the North
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The Monitor (Kampala)August 21, 2003
Posted to the web August 21, 2003 Badru D. Mulumba
Kampala The British government is considering backing an international peacekeeping force as one way of bringing peace to northern Uganda, a senior official has said.In a letter to Conservative MP Gregory Barker, the British Minister for Africa, Mr Chris Mullin, also says that the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the British High Commission in Kampala have noted that people in northern Uganda do not favour an intensified military effort by the government."There are calls for international mediation in talks between the two sides, and for an international peacekeeping force. We are liasing with our European Union partners, to look at options to resolve the conflict," Mullin said."They [rebel victims] would prefer a negotiated settlement. Our High Commission in Kampala is therefore encouraging the government of Uganda to consider all alternative methods to resolve the conflict."Mullin's letter was in response to a July 23 letter from MP Barker to the British Foreign Office Minister, Mr Bill Rammell, about the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in northern Uganda.The director of the United Nations Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Mr Malcom Harper, said that the letter followed a campaign calling on British MPs to sign a motion to increase efforts to resolve the war.Malcom said this in an August 13 letter to Mr Sam Akaki, the European co-ordinator of the International Lobby for Reform in Uganda, a political pressure group based in England.The Minister of State for Defence, Ms Ruth Nankabirwa, said yesterday that the government would only make a decision on the matter if it receives a formal suggestion from Britain."Cabinet would have to decide on such an issue," she said.However, the minister said that it might be too late for peaceful interventions in northern Uganda and that people are now tired of peace talks."They are now saying, 'fire for fire'. We have been seeing rebels saying that they want peace today, only to turn around tomorrow,'" Nankabirwa said.The government has maintained a double-pronged strategy of war and peace offers in an effort to end the rebellion.Mr Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army has been fighting government for more than 15 years.
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