Fugitive rebel refusing to sign 01/12/2008 07:35 - (SA) Want to know more? Answerit can help. <http://answerit.24.com/> <javascript:void(0)> <http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2435063,00.html#> [image: Click here to find out more!]<http://ad.za.doubleclick.net/click;h=v8/378d/0/0/%2a/e;44306;0-0;0;14950655;4307-300/250;0/0/0;;%7Esscs=%3f> Kony a no-show for peace deal<http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2434778,00.html> Uganda urges Kony to sign deal<http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2434236,00.html> Uganda 'failing war victims'<http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2427314,00.html> Ugandan rebels given deadline<http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2421970,00.html> Fearful refugees mourn kids<http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2412442,00.html> 1 000s flee LRA attacks<http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2406609,00.html> ICC calls for Kony's arrest<http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2405235,00.html> 'Starve rebels into peace talks'<http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2401943,00.html>
Nabanga - Uganda's fugitive rebel leader Joseph Kony told traditional elders he will not sign a final peace deal until an international arrest warrant for him is scrapped, the chief mediator said on Sunday. Riek Machar, the vice-president of south Sudan, said Kony met about 20 religious and cultural dignitaries from Uganda who trekked deep into the Congolese forest to try to convince him to lay down his arms after two decades of war. The war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted two million more in northern Uganda alone and driven others from their homes in neighbouring parts of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and oil-producing south Sudan. "Kony says he will not sign until the issue of the ICC (International Criminal Court) is resolved, until the deferrals are made," chief mediator Machar told Reuters in a clearing in the remote south Sudanese border village of Nabanga. Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas, is wanted by prosecutors in The Hague for his role in a conflict that has destabilised a swathe of central Africa. Uganda's government has said it will ask the UN Security Council to defer the ICC charges if he signs a peace deal. Machar said there was a slim chance the elders might return to the bush on Monday for more talks with Kony, but he suspected the elusive rebel chief already had quit the area. "I'm staying and I'm going to try to understand the issue fully," Machar said. "But knowing his behaviour, he is probably now elsewhere ... I don't see new ideas that have come out of his discussions with the elders." *November deadline* Mediators gave Kony until the end of November to give his final approval to the peace deal after he repeatedly failed to sign the pact as planned in April. Experts say they have few options while he refuses to leave his well-defended hideouts. Kampala, Kinshasa and Khartoum have vowed to attack him if he doesn't disarm. But Congolese and UN troops are tied up clashing with Laurent Nkunda's rebels further south in the Kivu region, and Kony's gunmen are well-trained and experienced. Sunday's rare meeting took place at a freshly cut camp surrounded by heavily armed LRA fighters. The elders, who left Nabanga on Friday, returned looking downcast. One participant said the atmosphere had been tense, and they were searched repeatedly by the rebels. Kony's fighters are notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors by slicing off their lips or ears, and kidnapping thousands of children who are forced to serve as fighters, porters or sex slaves. "We do not expect there will be a signing soon," the UN envoy for the talks, former Mozambican president Joachim Chissano, told reporters at the airport in south Sudan's capital Juba after he returned from Nabanga by helicopter. - Reuters
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