Global court said ready to finger Uganda rebels
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-09-30 09:16

The International Criminal Court is expected to issue arrest warrants shortly for leaders of a Uganda rebel force accused of raping and maiming children over two decades, a U.N. official said on Thursday.

Remnants of the Lord's Resistance Army recently took refuge in the Congo, and will be disarmed and evicted by force, if necessary, said William Lacy Swing, head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"We understand that the International Criminal Court will be issuing international arrest warrants imminently for a number of key LRA leaders and sending these directly to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ugandan governments," Swing told a closed U.N. Security Council session, according to his written notes obtained by Reuters.

Some diplomats said the warrants could be issued as early as this week or next. Most court observers believe sealed indictments have already gone to a three-judge pretrial chamber of the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, Netherlands.

The indictments would be the first issued by the International Criminal Court, the first permanent global tribunal set up to try individuals for the world's worst atrocities -- genocide, war crimes and systematic human rights abuses.

The LRA, led by a Christian mystic, Joseph Kony, is not on the Security Council's agenda but news that LRA deputy Vincent Otti had moved fighters to the Congo, brought it to the council's attention.

The LRA was originally armed by Sudan in its conflict with Uganda. The group has camps in Sudan, and some diplomats say sections of the Sudanese military still support it.

Nineteen years of warfare by the LRA has devastated northern Uganda and uprooted more than 1.6 million people, causing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. More than 10,000 children have been kidnapped by the rebels and forced to become fighters, porters and sex slaves.

On September 18, Swing said 320 fighters and 80 family members entered the Congo from Sudan and were in Aba, in the northeast Haut Uele district of Orientale Province, near the Sudanese and Ugandan borders.

FAILED TALKS

Swing, an American diplomat, said Congolese troops and U.N. peacekeeping officials met three LRA representatives in Aba on Sunday. The LRA team was "noncommittal on the issue of surrender and disarmament, pending further instructions from their leader, Joseph Kony," Swing said.

Congo President Joseph Kabila ordered military reinforcements of the area and Ugandan soldiers were amassing on the Sudanese side of the border.

The U.N. Mission in the Congo, known by its French acronym MONUC, was prepared to support the Congolese army to ensure the Ugandan rebels leave immediately, "if necessary by force," Swing said in his briefing paper.

The prosecutor of the ICC has held off arrest warrants for a year to give Betty Bigombe, a former Ugandan Cabinet minister and World Bank official, a chance to negotiate with Kony. The talks have now failed.

William Pace, head of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, an advocacy group that includes 2,000 civil society organizations, said he expected the arrest warrants within a week.

Pace said humanitarian groups and some U.N. officials had opposed the warrants because the court would have problems protecting potential witnesses and wreck any peace talks.

"There were a lot of complications the ICC and the Ugandan government had to take into consideration," he said.

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