RI-KWANGBA, Sudan (Reuters) - Ugandan government negotiators quit peace talks on Friday after Uganda's fugitive rebel commander Joseph Kony delayed signing a final deal.
"We are going back to Uganda until we are informed by thechief mediator when the Lord's Resistance Army will be ready tosign," Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said on theremote Sudan-Congo border.
Rugunda said a separate signing ceremony by UgandanPresident Yoweri Museveni that was planned for April 15 in thesouth Sudanese capital Juba had been indefinitely postponed.
"Unless circumstances significantly change, the governmentof Uganda has no plans to extend the cessation of hostilitiesagreement," he said. That truce expires on April 15.
The draft deal between Kony's LRA and the government hadappeared to be nearing failure overnight after the elusiveguerrilla leader asked mediators to clarify parts of the text.
Sources involved in the talks said he later fired his chiefnegotiator.
Uganda's 22-year civil-war has killed tens of thousands ofpeople, uprooted 2 million more and destabilised neighbouringparts of oil-rich south Sudan and mineral-rich eastern Congo.
Kony and two of his top deputies are wanted for war crimesby the International Criminal Court in The Hague, includingrape, murder and the abduction of thousands of children toserve as fighters, porters and sex slaves.
(Reporting by Francis Kwera; Writing by Daniel Wallis;Editing by Stephen Weeks)
