KAMPALA (AFP) - Uganda's Lord Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group announced a ceasefire in its 16-year-old uprising, matching a limited unilateral government truce declared a week earlier.
LRA leader Joseph "Kony today has reaffirmed his commitment to the peace process. The LRA shall not attack the UPDF (Ugandan army) anywhere in northern Uganda or southern Sudan," rebel spokesman Sam Kolo told a Kampala radio station phone-in talk show.
The LRA has been fighting government forces since 1988 to replace President Yoweri Museveni's secular government with one based on the biblical Ten Commandments.
But the rebel force is best known for its brutality against the civilian population in the region, 1.6 million of whom have been displaced from their homes while thousands of children have been abducted for forcible recruitment as rebel fighters or sex slaves to rebel commanders.
Friday's announcement came amid fresh moves towards talks between the LRA and the government to end a war that UN officials say has spawned the world's worst forgotten humanitarian crisis.
On Wednesday, a government delegation left the capital for an undisclosed location in northern Uganda, where, as well as neighbouring southern Sudan, the rebels have bases.
Officials in Kampala said the team hoped to open talks with the LRA.
On Sunday, President Yoweri Museveni announced a week-long halt in military action against the LRA in limited areas of the northern Acholi province so as to create a conducive environment for talks.
The LRA announced a similar ceasefire in 2002, but since some fighters failed to abide by it, very possibly because word had not got through to them, the truce failed to hold.
While there has been some contact between the government and the LRA over the years, subtsantive peace talks have never got off the ground.
11/19/2004 - 22:45 GMT - AFP