RRIA, May 3: Uganda: U

Along with denunciations of the Lord's Resistance Army as "a barbaric cult," the United States Congress heard sharp criticisms last week of the Ugandan government's alleged failure to pursue peace negotiations with the LRA and to prevent the deaths of thousands of displaced civilians.

Congressman Chris Smith, chairman of the US House of Representatives' Africa subcommittee, set the tone for the April 26 inquiry by suggesting that the government is "insufficiently committed to improving the situation in northern Uganda."

Smith noted two occasions - in 1993 and in 2004-05 - when the government launched military offensives that sabotaged opportunities to conduct peace talks with the LRA. These campaigns "ended any chance of peace and yet failed to end the terrorism of the LRA," Smith observed.

The Republican lawmaker also cited suggestions that President Yoweri Museveni's government may have "malevolent reasons" for not ending the war. Smith pointed to findings by the US-based Feinstein International Famine Centre that many northern Ugandans believe the government is seeking to "neutralise the political challenge from the north." Smith said that Museveni's unpopularity in the north was highlighted by Kizza Besigye's capture of 80 per cent of the region's votes earlier this year.

Continuing to express dissatisfaction with Museveni's government, Smith said he and other members of Congress will soon introduce a Bill to deny US military assistance to Uganda and six other countries believed to use child soldiers.

A US deputy assistant secretary of state told Smith's subcommittee, however, that the Ugandan military" appears to be making a concentrated effort to comply" with a protocol barring recruitment of soldiers under the age of 18. But the State Department official, Jeffrey Krilla, added that government-allied Local Defence Units in the north "continue to have high child recruitment, reportedly due to the collusion of local officials."

Experts testifying at the inquiry also accused the Ugandan government of doing little to safeguard many of the 1.5 million northerners forced into camps for displaced persons.

An official with the US Agency for International Development endorsed the findings of a study last year indicating that more than 900 excess deaths per week are occurring among Ugandans in these camps.

"Even when compared with other humanitarian emergencies, northern Uganda's camps are woefully deficient in the provision of water for drinking and bathing, latrines for adequate sanitation, and basic living space for physical and mental well-being," said Leonard Rogers, a USAid deputy assistant administrator.

Also confirming the scientific validity of the July 2005 study, Dr Ronald Waldman, a professor at Columbia University's School of Public Health, cited estimates that up to 12,000 displaced children had died in northern Uganda during the first seven months of last year.

The UN representative of Refugees International added that the Uganda government "has clearly failed in fulfilling its responsibility" to assist displaced persons in the north. "Displaced persons told Refugees International that Ugandan soldiers, particularly members of the mobile units, steal, rape, exploit and kill, and victims have almost no way to address these violations," said Michelle Brown, the relief group's representative.