INTERVIEW-Uganda's Museveni says only army can crush rebels
By William Maclean
SOROTI, Uganda (Reuters) - Military pressure is the only way to end Uganda's bloody insurgency because negotiations cannot work with "empty head" rebel bandits with no political agenda, President Yoweri Museveni said Tuesday.
Speaking at a military camp near northern villages devastated by bands of attackers of the cult-like Lord's Resistance Army rebels, Museveni added that military pressure was pushing the LRA toward what he called a "soft landing" solution such as exile for its key members.
"They (rebels) are empty heads really, so negotiation is not a solution. But a soft landing, after you have put a lot of pressure on them, can be arranged," Museveni told Reuters in an interview.
"But that is not really a peaceful solution. It must be military pressure that coerces them into accepting a soft landing, that for instance (might involve) being relocated to some place in the world. But not appeasement. Appeasement is not a solution."
For 17 years the LRA, notorious for slicing off the lips and limbs of their victims, has waged war against the government, snatching tens of thousands of children from villages and forcing them to work as front-line soldiers and sex slaves.
To avoid capture, children, dubbed night commuters, flock to northern Ugandan towns, sleeping at hospitals, bus terminals and church grounds before returning to their homes the next day.
In their latest strike, the rebels attacked a northern village Monday, killing 10 people by bludgeoning their heads with wooden sticks, an army spokesman said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to address donors later Tuesday and call for funds to boost humanitarian work in 25 countries including Uganda, Congo, Burundi and Sudan.
Several church and political leaders from the north have called on the government to negotiate peace with the LRA, arguing that the rebellion stems from the feelings among the northern Acholi people that they have been marginalized by Museveni's 17-year-old government.
'BANDITRY AND BRIGANDAGE'
But Museveni said there was nothing political about the LRA and analysts note that the movement, which numbers at least 3,000 fighters, the bulk of them children, has never spelled out its demands in public.
"It's just banditry and brigandage, just stealing chickens, people's food, taking women, living like an outlaw. That's their (the LRA's) real interest," Museveni said.
He reiterated that the "pressure" he envisaged included the assassination of LRA leader Joseph Kony, a former altar boy said to talk to spirits and angels who command him to kill.
Asked if he wanted to cripple the LRA the way the Angolan government ended its civil war -- by killing UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi in 2002 -- he replied: "Yes. We are targeting those (LRA) leaders."
11/18/03 11:12 ET
