Museveni set to attend LRA talks

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Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has confirmed he will go to southern Sudan where peace talks with Lord's Resistance Army rebels have stalled.

He told the BBC that he would consult the southern Sudanese mediators at the talks in Juba in the next few days.

Talks began in July to try to end the 20-year conflict in northern Uganda.

Both the government and the rebels have blamed each other for the impasse and for recent clashes which have broken the terms of the current truce.

Attacks

Rebels say the Ugandan army attacked their militiamen as they went to designated assembly camps in southern Sudan.

"A group of UPDF [Ugandan army] numbering about 400 attacked our soldiers who were resting while they were on their way back to Owiny-Ki-Bul," LRA spokesman Godfrey Ayo told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

"Our soldiers repulsed them, they went on the defensive and one captain was left dead after the battle," he added.

However, Ugandan army spokesman, Major Felix Kulayigye gave a different account.

"One of our officers was ambushed and brutally murdered by a group of LRA rebels - 4 km east of the River Nile, 30 km south of Juba - in an area where he did not expect any LRA rebels," he told the BBC Focus on Africa programme.

Assembly camps

President Museveni earlier said the clashes involved the LRA and a local Sudanese militia force.

The LRA meanwhile says it has withdrawn its forces from the assembly camps until Ugandan soldiers in the area are moved away.

The cessation of hostilities agreement signed by both sides at the peace talks had recently been extended after a monitoring group had found that both the LRA and the Ugandan government had so far failed to honour its terms.

The LRA had been given more time to assemble at two points in southern Sudan in return for amnesty from the Ugandan government.

But the gathering of the LRA fighters appears to be a sticking point in the peace process to end the war which has left tens of thousands of people dead and more than one-and-a-half million displaced.