LRA Leadership in a fix
A a short break has allowed Juba Talks Blogspot to to visit East and Central Africa to assess the situation on the ground. A worrying discovery has been the apparent fix that the LRA leadership are in. They appear to be so distrustfull of any external advice such that they are gradually gliding back into their survival instinct mode of 'fight or die'. This is not withstanding the provocations that the Uganda Government forces have also recently made, the alleged masaacre of 41 innocent civilins being one.

A Juba Talks Blogspot contributor recently visited Juba. Clearly, there appeared to be lack of direction particularly on how to deal with the issue of the ICC warants. While our contributor was there, frantic efforts were being made to identify legal experts from abroad. It appeared as if Vincent Otti made contact with a firm of lawyers abroad. It was not clear whether this firm was based in New York, Sweden or London. What was leaked to our contributor however was that a Ugandan lawyer based abroad is actively seeking legal support for the LRA leadership to counter the ICC warrants. However, the LRA leadership is so frightenned of falling into the ICC trap such that they cannot make up their minds whether they should enagage any external legal firm. They prefer to deal with the local legal representatives from Uganda as these do not have the international contact that they fear.

Tension remains high and is building up day by day in Juba. When our contributor was in Juba, the numbers of those people who at the beginning claimed to be part of the LRA negoatiation team had dwindled. While Dr Paito from the UK made a trip out to UK but returned, his colleague Dr Walter Okello was no where to be seen. It wasn't clear whether he had any plans to rejoin the negoatiation team. Rumour has it that he has fallen out of favour with some in the team. Other LRA Juba team members are also apprehensive about their fate in case the Juba talks fail. This is becoming even more of a problem since the hosts, the Government of Southern Sudan, are very upset about the killing of their innocent citizens. If it turns out that it was the LRA, and the talks fail, will the LRA Juba team members be able to exit Sudan? This is the major question that our contributor left the team pondering on.