GULU, 18 August 2008 (IRIN) - The United Nations special envoy for Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)-affected areas, Joachim Chissano, has said LRA leader Joseph Kony is finally willing to sign a deal to end more than 20 years of conflict in northern Uganda, but only after meeting personally with the mediator of peace talks.

A Final Peace Agreement was to have been signed in April, but Kony failed to show up to the ceremony because of concerns about his indictment for war crimes issued by the International Criminal Court.

"I am processing the meeting between the LRA leader with the mediator [Southern Sudan President Riek Machar]," Chissano said on 17 August at the end of a two-day visit to the country.

Chissano, who toured the LRA conflict-affected district of Gulu in northern Uganda, had earlier held a series of meetings with President Yoweri Museveni and other senior government officials in the capital, Kampala, as well as with representatives of UN agencies and aid organisations. In Gulu, Chissano held meetings with cultural and political leaders, survivors of the conflict, returnees, and internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The envoy reiterated that during almost two years of talks in the Southern Sudanese capital, Juba, all issues had been resolved to both sides' satisfaction.

"The final agreement has been initialled and we are waiting, any time, for Gen Kony and President Museveni to sign it.

"President Museveni is ready to sign any time but Gen Kony still wants to have a meeting with his delegation, the chief mediator and others before he signs, probably to have some clarification since he was not involved directly in the talks, he has been relying on information from his delegation so he needs more clarification and understanding."

Asked if he was informed about a meeting that Kony had requested with the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), Chissano said: "Well, if this meeting takes place, it will mean that the LRA will reconcile with the SPLA because, you know, a LRA unit recently attacked a SPLA unit that resulted in the death of SPLA soldiers and some Sudanese civilians and this means they needed to meet and reconcile. The fact that the meeting will take place means that now there is a good cooperation between the two sides."

On returns and resettlement, Chissano said: "It is a good thing that people are returning home because I think that this process is irreversible because no one thinks of resuming war or joining the LRA ranks."

Despite what Kony says, he added, "conditions lead us to believe that this process of peace is irreversible... the LRA methods of fighting will not work in my objective analysis".

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