By Jeremy Clarke NAIROBI, March 15 (Reuters) - Lack of progress in peace talks between Uganda's government and northern rebels has dismayed women uprooted by 20 years of war and they want to play a bigger role in the dialogue, aid workers said on Thursday. Fighting between the military and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) insurgents has forced some 1.7 million people into squalid camps in the remote north. Hopes for peace raised by the start of negotiations in July are crumbling fast. More than half the women questioned at several internally-displaced camps doubted the stop-start talks could bring lasting peace, and nearly 90 percent said women from the most afflicted communities should be given greater involvement. "They should have taken the people who tasted the soup of the war -- those who have really seen the worst," one woman told CARE International in remarks published in a report on Thursday. Many women said they wanted to play a direct role in the talks, negotiating with the government and rebels on behalf of their war-weary communities. "If the talks fail, the international community should come and arrest both parties because it is obvious they want to see people suffer," said another woman. The discussions in Juba, capital of neighbouring southern Sudan, produced a landmark truce deal in August. But that expired last month amid ongoing mutual mistrust. LRA representatives walked out of the talks in January saying they feared for their safety in Juba, but on Tuesday Uganda's government said the rebels had pledged to return after it agreed to call in more mediators from five African countries. Analysts are sceptical the negotiations can achieve much while the LRA leaders -- who are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague -- remain hidden in the dense forests in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. The rebels are blamed for years of atrocities including kidnapping thousands of children to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves. But the women interviewed by CARE said the guerrillas would still be welcomed home if talks brought peace. "The LRA should accept that their communities will accept them," one woman said.
