Top LRA rebel meets Ugandans in boost for truce

KAMPALA, Sep 5 (Reuters) A Ugandan rebel leader left his hideout and met Ugandan army officers in the highest-level contact yet between northern guerrillas and the army they battled during 20 years of brutal conflict.

The confidence-building session yesterday between Dominic Ongwen and Ugandan army officers was the latest step in a process to end one of Africa's longest wars following a truce which took affect last week.

Ugandan forces claimed to have killed Ongwen last year, ending the hunt for one of five Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) guerrilla leaders accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its first indictments.

They later admitted he had survived, and yesterday he finally broke cover for four hours to meet two senior Ugandan officers at a remote dirt crossroads in northern Uganda's Pader district.

''He asked for food and it was given,'' said Ugandan army spokesman Major Felix Kulayigye. ''It was a confidence building measure and another positive sign, that someone like Dominic can now sit and talk peace with two of our brigade commanders.'' The LRA's leadership, including its elusive chief Joseph Kony, are hidden in lawless eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Ongwen is the most senior rebel remaining in northern Uganda -- and the only still in Uganda one wanted in The Hague.

The LRA are notorious for massacring and mutilating civilians, and abducting thousands of children. Two decades of war have uprooted nearly 2 million people in northern Uganda.

Kulayigye said Ongwen told the military he was leading about 80 people, including women and children, to a south Sudanese camp under a landmark truce that started a week ago.

He also met a bishop, two top local government leaders, and spoke by telephone with Interior Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, who heads Uganda's delegation at the peace talks. Uganda has offered the rebels amnesty if negotiations succeed.

Under last week's truce deal, the rebels now have two weeks to gather at two Sudanese assembly points, where they will be fed and protected by south Sudanese forces.

Talks had been due to resume in the southern capital Juba yesterday, but were delayed by the absence of the chief mediator, south Sudan's Vice President Riek Machar, aides said.

They said he remained at one of the assembly points east of the Nile, Owiny-ki-Bul, which he visited at the weekend.

Experts say the LRA rebels have their backs to the wall, cut off from years of support from Sudan's government in Khartoum, which had used them against its own rebels, and ringed by states legally obliged to arrest them for the ICC.

Southern Sudan mediated the Ugandan peace process in part to stop the war from spilling into its territory. Sudanese villages were increasingly targeted by LRA raids and the Ugandan military hunted rebels inside Sudan.

Reuters MS RN1518