Uganda says LRA rebels should have quit Congo

By Francis Kwera

KAMPALA, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is violating the terms of a truce deal with Kampala by being in neighbouring Congo, Uganda's military said on Thursday after the rebels vowed to resume war in Uganda if attacked.

An agreement reached on Saturday between Uganda and neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) called for action to stamp out several militias plaguing eastern Congo, including the LRA, has infuriated the rebels.

The LRA, who fought a two-decade conflict in northern Uganda, said the agreement jeopardised peace talks under way with the Ugandan government and warned that any attack on them would be an invitation to war.

But Uganda's military spokesman, Major Felix Kulayigye, told Reuters that according to a cessation of hostilities deal reached at the peace talks, LRA fighters were meant to have left Congo months ago and assembled at Ri-Kwangba in southern Sudan.

"So they have no business worrying about the Arusha Agreement, which is about rebel groups in Congo," he said.

"If the LRA violates this truce we will hold it against them ... We are determined to defend the gains made in northern Uganda. We will not let that region slide back into insecurity."

Hopes for peace have been raised by more than a year of peace negotiations between LRA representatives and Ugandan officials in Juba, the capital of neighbouring south Sudan.

As calm returns to the north, Uganda's government began closing camps this week that once housed 1.7 million people uprooted by 20 years of fighting.

But the LRA, whose leaders are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, was infuriated by the deal reached at the weekend in Arusha between Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni and his Congolese counterpart Joseph Kabila.

An LRA spokesman told a news conference in Nairobi that any attack on the group's military positions would be "strictly treated as a declaration of war, resumption of war and above all an invitation to bring war back to Uganda".

The LRA are just one of a number of shadowy guerrilla groups that have set up shop in lawless eastern Congo, which has long been a tinderbox of wars and ethnic conflicts. Uganda has invaded twice in the past saying it wanted to flush out rebels.