Feb 6 (Reuters) - Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army rebels will resume an offensive against the government unless Kampala agrees to move faltering peace talks to a new venue outside south Sudan, the LRA deputy commander said on Tuesday. Here are key facts about the LRA and its leader Joseph Kony: * Self-proclaimed mystic Kony began one of a series of initially popular uprisings in north Uganda after President Yoweri Museveni seized power in 1986. But tactics of abducting recruits and killing civilians soon alienated supporters. * The LRA is infamous for kidnapping children for use as soldiers, porters and "wives." Although there are no universally accepted figures, the children are believed to number many thousands. Some are freed after days, others never escape. * The rebels have been engaged in south Sudanese-mediated peace talks since July, but walked out last month, fearing for their security after Sudan's president vowed "to get rid of the LRA from Sudan." They now want a new venue. * A landmark truce was signed in August and later renewed, giving the rebels until the end of January to gather in two camps in south Sudan. * Kony's force was once supported by the Khartoum government as a proxy militia, although Khartoum says it has now cut ties with the LRA. Kony left his hideouts in south Sudan in 2005 for the Democratic Republic of Congo's remote Garamba forest. * Many northerners revile Kony for his group's atrocities, but also blame Museveni for setting up camps for 1.7 million people as part of his counter-insurgency strategy, fuelling one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. * Kony says he is fighting to defend the Biblical Ten Commandments, although his group has also articulated a range of northern grievances, from the looting of cattle by Museveni's troops to demands for a greater share of political power.
