UN battles arms trafficking in Congo - DRC and Ugandan armies are cooperating with UN forces

U.N. battles arms trafficking in Congo
From UPI - September 23, 2010 at 4:13 PM

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- U.N. peacekeepers are patrolling the Congo-Uganda border amid reports that the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army is trafficking arms in the area, an official said.

"This concern stems from information on the seizure in Uganda of vehicles transporting arms," Lt. Col. Amadou Gueye, a spokesman for the U.N. Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said Wednesday at a weekly news briefing in Kinshasa, U.N. News reported.

"Measures to halt this traffic include first of all continuing to patrol this frontier with our units deployed in the sector," Gueye said, adding that the DRC and Ugandan armies are cooperating with U.N. forces.

The LRA operated in Uganda for 20 years before expanding its operations into Congo and Sudan. The group is accused of war crimes including mutilations and the use of child soldiers, U.N. News said.

S. Sudan: SPLM accuses NCP of supporting LRA to disrupt S. Sudan independence vote

SPLM accuses NCP of supporting LRA to disrupt S. Sudan independence vote
From Bor Globe Network www.borglobe.com - 22 September 2010 at 1:08 pm by Mabior Philip

Juba, Sudan (Borglobe) - The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement has accused her peace partner of providing a continued support to the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebels in a ploy to disrupt the conduct of an independence vote in Southern Sudan.

In a press briefing yesterday at the SPLM Southern Sector secretariat, the Acting Deputy Secretary General for Southern sector, Antipas Nyok Kucha, said the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) arm the rebels, to later create instability in the south.

“They are armed wings, armed militia, being funded by the NCP to sabotage the system in the south”, Antipas Nyok told reporters.

“Don’t think LRA is a rebel army fighting against the Ugandan government but it is a support militia backing the SAF to destabilize people in the south”.

He said these destructive plans are responsible for the quest of Southerners for an independent nation in an internationally supervised self determination referendum January next year.

“If you are suffering from cancer and the cancer is threatening to finish up your body, what do you do?” Nyok wandered. “You have to go to the doctor so that the arm is cut away”, he said, implying that the doctor is the referendum.

In a related development, the SPLM rejected the NCP’s proposal of dual citizenship for the people of Abyei. “I am telling our people, these are provocative statements”, he said. “It is the constitution to set citizenship of the people and not any individual to get and propose dual citizenship”, he stressed. There is no home that can be co-owned but it must have its owner, he added.