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By Vincent Mayanja
Kampala - Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army on Wednesday eased its demand for the complete dissolution of the country's military as peace talks were set to resume in southern Sudan, officials said.
Dropping its government-rejected call for the disbandment and reformation of the Ugandan People's Defense Forces (UPDF), the LRA instead called for its restructuring and for a grace period for its fighters to disarm or integrate.
The rebels also renewed their insistence on returning Uganda to a federal system with broad autonomy for its various regions, including the north where the LRA has fought a brutal, two-decade insurgency.
But the proposals, made by Ayena Odongo, the chief legal advisor to the rebel delegation at the negotiations, was dismissed by Kampala, which said it was not new and the LRA concerns should be addressed by existing reform plans.
"Rather than talking about separate armies, as we try to mold a new force with a national character, the LRA should in the meantime be left alone until the end of that process," Odongo has said.
"Then we can have the demobilisation exercise and re-integration of the LRA into the army," he said from the talks' venue in the southern Sudanese capital of Juba.
Odongo said the restructuring, rather than disbandment and formation of a new army as the LRA earlier wanted, would better allow the UPDF to have equal representation from all parts of the country.
The spokesperson for the government delegation in Juba, Paddy Ankunda, however, said the rebel proposal was unworkable and that their fighters - numbering between 500 and 5 000 - could never be allowed to remain as a separate force.
"This is not a new thing," Ankunda said, noting Kampala already has a military reform programme that include the integration of ex-rebel fighters.
"The programme answers their proposals quite well and the integration of the LRA into the army is neither a new proposal because we already have 1 500 ex-LRA fighters who have been integrated into the army," he told AFP.
"The UPDF cannot disband and Uganda can never have two armies," he said.
In addition to submitting its proposal for the military, the LRA said it would not drop its insistence on the restoration of federal constitution for Uganda and its 26 million people.
"We are insisting of federalism," Odongo said.
"When this system was in place before independence and immediately after, the country experienced relative stability and development and since it was abolished, Uganda has never been the same again," he added.
After independence in 1962, Uganda adopted a federal system but that was dropped five years when a new constitution was written.
The rebels also called on lawmakers to oversee political reform in the country and create a government ministry mandated to handle the rehabilitation of war-wrecked northern and eastern Uganda.
The Juba talks are seen as the best chance to end the 19-year conflict in northern Uganda that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly two million and is regularly called one of the world's worst and most-forgotten humanitarian crises. - Sapa-AFP
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