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****** Uganda: UPDF Helps Odhiambo to Come Out ******
Henry Mukasa
9 February 2009
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Kampala — THE army met officials of the UN peace-keeping mission in Sudan to
discuss the surrender of LRA deputy commander Okot Odhiambo.
The UPDF delegation to the meeting in Yambio, South Sudan, was led by Col.
Moses Rwakitarate, the deputy commander of the Operation Lightning Thunder, a
joint military offensive hunting down the rebels in north-eastern DR Congo.
Others who attended the meeting over the weekend included the SPLA Brigade
Commander of Yambio, the UN security chief in the area and the Bangladesh
contingent commander of UN peace-keeping force in Sudan.
The meeting discussed the location of rebel commanders Odhiambo and Dominic
Ongwen and the conditions they set for their surrender.
Rwakitarate said UPDF in its "spirit of forgiveness" agreed to facilitate the
surrender of the duo and their fighters.
"We agreed to give them a 10-kilometre radius corridor from Ri-Kwangba,"
Rwakitarate said on phone from the war zone.
Rwakitarate, who is the Chief of Staff of the UPDF airforce, said Odhiambo had
asked for a map showing the safe corridor to be published in the press "before
he walks to freedom."
"We gave them two coordinates from where the corridor begins towards Ri-Kwangba
because they want to surrender to UPDF in South Sudan. A unit of the UPDF will
disarm them before they meet journalists and other officials," he explained.
Rwakitarate said the army would respect the 10km-radius and only engage rebels
found outside that passage. He referred The New Vision to the International
Organisation of Migration (IOM) for a copy of the map.
However, the organisation's chief of operation in Uganda, Jeremy Haslem,
declined to comment on the operation to receive Odhiambo and Ongwen or the
availability of the safe corridor map.
"I cannot speak at this moment. The operation seems to be sensitive. If there
is any information, we shall issue it simultaneously. If there is any map, it
will be issued by the Government," Haslem remarked.
Defence ministry and army spokesperson Maj. Felix Kulayigye said the map was
not in the ministry's possession yet.
He added that the UPDF would fulfil all the commitments it has entered during
the surrender process.
"We shall ensure he is safe and cooperate with them (IOM) in accordance to
international humanitarian law and war law," Kulayigye said.
The commanders said the war would soon end.
"The mission is going on well. There are many achievements," the overall
commander of Operation Lightning Thunder, Brig. Patrick Kankiriho, said
yesterday.
He said a boy and a girl were rescued, adding that they were looking after a
sick LRA commander who was understood to be Ceaser Achellam.
Rwakitarate said: "We are looking forward to coming back home victorious.
Everything that has a beginning has an end. This is the end of LRA."
Asked where LRA chief Joseph Kony was, Rwakitarate quipped: "You wait."
Probed what that meant, he retorted: "I said you wait."
Copyright © 2009 New Vision. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica
Global Media (allAfrica.com).
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