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At UN, Talk of Uganda Asking to Suspend
War Crimes Indictment of Lord's Resistance Army
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at
the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
March 27 -- With the
planned signing day of a peace treaty between Uganda and the Lord's
Resistance
Army put back to April 5, on Thursday France's Ambassador to the UN
Jean-Maurice Ripert told Inner City Press that the Security Council
could
suspend for months or a year the International Criminal Court's
indictments of
the LRA leaders including Joseph Kony "if the government pursues its
own
tribunal or... traditional pursuits." Video here,
from Minute 2:15.
Ambassador
Ripert's language tracks the agreement, still not finalized, between
Uganda's
Museveni government and the LRA, providing for "a special division of
the
High Court of Uganda, to try individuals who are alleged to have
committed serious
crimes during the conflict." And so, is the fix in, that Museveni has
committed to ask for, and the Security Council has somehow committed to
give, a
year suspension of the ICC indictments? "I'm not saying we'd support
it," France's Amb. Ripert added.
Joseph Kony and LRA: just give me a year
Inner
City Press asked Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, president of the
Council
for this month, about Wednesday's closed-door briefing of the Council
about
Uganda. Was there a discussion of the Lord's Resistance Army? Video here,
from
Minute 7:41
"The members of the
Council only took in the information," Amb. Churkin responded. But what information? Watch this site.
* * *
These reports are
usually also available through
Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here for a
Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army.
Click
here for an earlier
Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund.
Video Analysis here
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