(Recasts with quotes, details) By Skye Wheeler JUBA, Sudan, April 26 (Reuters) - Talks between Uganda's government and northern rebels to end two decades of civil war resumed on Thursday with a U.N. envoy warning both sides not to let the chance for peace slip through their grasp. Former Mozambique president Joaquim Chissano told government negotiators and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) representatives that on his country's long road to peace, it had never seen support like that being offered to help end Uganda's conflict. "Do not let this opportunity go," Chissano told the delegates before they went into closed-door discussions at a hotel in southern Sudan's capital Juba. "If lost, this opportunity shall never return." Reinforcing the international drive for peace, mediators from South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia also attended, along with south Sudanese President Salva Kiir and Western diplomats. "We are here to solve problems," the head of the LRA delegation, Martin Ojul, told Reuters before the meeting. "Our expectation is things will go smoothly." Three months ago, the LRA negotiators walked out of the talks after Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir threatened them. But last month, Chissano convinced them to return. The head of the government team, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, said his administration would do "everything possible" to bring peace. "(We'll) ensure our brothers and sisters of the LRA ... are able to come home with heads high and nothing to fear," he said. The insurgency, led by guerrillas infamous for murdering and mutilating civilians and kidnapping children to serve as soldiers, has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 1.7 million more into squalid camps. The desperate conditions in the camps, which lack adequate water and medicine, led the United Nations to call northern Uganda one of the world's worst humanitarian catastrophes. A truce signed between the two parties last August at the talks raised hopes of an end to one of Africa's longest wars. But most camp residents have seen little to cheer so far. The biggest sticking point remains International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments for the LRA's elusive, self-proclaimed prophet leader Joseph Kony and four of his commanders on charges of mass murder, rape and child abduction. Kony has said he will never agree to peace unless the warrants are scrapped, and Ojul said the rebel negotiators' first priorities were the security of the group's leaders and the resolution of the ICC issue.
