JUBA, Sudan, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Ugandan rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army reject a government proposal to sign a peace deal on March 6 and want more time to consult their leader in his remote hiding place, a rebel spokesman said on Tuesday. A ceasefire agreed on Saturday left demobilisation as the only outstanding issue to finalise an agreement to end one of Africa's longest wars. Mediators had been forecasting a deal within days. Captain Chris Magezi, spokesman for the government delegation at the talks in south Sudan, said Uganda had suggested March 6 as the date for the agreement to be signed. But the rebels said they needed more time to consult with leader Joseph Kony, hiding in the remote forests of northeastern Congo. "We need to consult first," said chief LRA negotiator David Nyekorach-Matsanga. "That date is the wish of the government of Uganda. We are not in a rush." Sources close to the talks told Reuters that Kony had rejected a guarantee of his safety if he attended the talks from U.N. envoy and mediator Joaquim Chissano, Mozambique's former president. Kony and two other LRA commanders are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Earlier this week, the government accused the LRA of breaking the truce by attacking civilians in Central African Republic, threatening the apparent progress at the talks. LRA negotiators in Juba denied the accusations. Two decades of civil war have destabilised northern Uganda and neighbouring parts of eastern Congo and south Sudan, killing tens of thousands of people and uprooting some 2 million more. (Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)
A boy holds up a toy gun at the Al Salaam camp for internally displaced people (IDP) on the outskirts of El Fasher, the administrative capital of North Darfur, in this ...
