U.S. Names Lra Rebels On World's Top Terrorist List
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The Monitor (Kampala)
April 30, 2005
Posted to the web April 29, 2005
Kakaire A. Kirunda
Mbale
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels remain among the world's top terrorist organisations listed by US State Department in its annual 2004 terrorism report.
The report Country Reports on Terrorism 2004 was released on Wednesday in Washington.
It shows terrorist groups that were active over the past year.
"This group (LRA) has carried out acts of extreme brutality against innocent civilians, kidnapping children for use as soldiers and sex slaves and operates in northern and eastern Uganda and southern Sudan," said the report.
It singles out the February LRA attack on the Barlonyo refugee camp near Lira that left nearly 200 people dead as the most deadly in 2004.
But the report notes that during 2004, the Sudanese government cooperated with the Ugandan government to cut off supplies to the LRA and to allow the UPDF operate on Sudanese territory.
"The Ugandan government inflicted severe setbacks to the LRA. It also continued an amnesty programme for senior LRA combatants, many of whom opted to come out of the bush and accept the offer," the report said.
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Though fighting has continued, the report said during 2004, a combination of military pressure, officers of amnesty, and several rounds of negotiations markedly degraded the LRA capabilities due to death, desertion, and defection of senior commanders. The report said a small number of al-Qaida operatives in East Africa, particularly Somalia, continued to pose the most serious threat to American interests in the region.
The $100 million US- East Africa Counter Terrorism Initiative Programme announced by President Bush in 2003, dedicated sizeable resources to improving counter terrorism capabilities in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Djibouti, Eritrea, and Ethiopia in 2004.
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