African leaders approve fresh military offensive against Ugandan rebels

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The LRA has been blamed for worsening humanitarian crisis in North-Eastern Congo .

The African leaders called for renewed military action against the rebel group to neutralize its destabilizing activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (D R C), South Sudan and the Central African Republic (CAR), from where hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.

The Ugandan government, along with the Southern Sudan government and the DRC, launched a military offensive against the rebel group in late 2008.
However, the military offensive left the group barely unshaken and its leaders later met journalists in Nairobi, Kenya, and announced that the group might re-enter Northern Uganda.

In recent weeks, LRA has been accused of the killing and displacement of local populations in the three countries where it operates.
African leaders, in their new action plan against conflicts in the continent, efforts to renew the military activities against the rebel group and bring an end t o its atrocities should be given priority for peace to prevail in the region.
The LRA, which has been fighting the Ugandan government since 1986, is accused o f carrying out atrocious killings, abduction of children into its ranks and the u se of women as sex slaves by its soldiers.
The Assembly of African leaders has also called for the implementation of concrete steps to better protect the civilians in Eastern Congo, particularly women.

The Eastern Congo region has witnessed a raging conflict, which has attracted the attention of neighboring Rwanda, to fight the rebel group, the Democratic Lib e ration Forces of Rwanda (FDLR).
Earlier, African Union Chairman Mouammar Kadhafi, who convened the summit, expressed hope that the governments of DRC and Rwanda were close to finding a solution to the crisis.
"The situation in the DRC is not so bad because there is cooperation between Rwanda and the DRC governments to fight the rebellion," Kadhafi told fellow African leaders.

Source: Allafrica.com