'Amnesty' for Uganda rebel chief

Joseph Kony calls himself a freedom fighter

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has promised to grant Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony an amnesty if peace talks next week are successful.

He said he would grant this even though the rebel leader has been indicted by an international court for war crimes.

The talks between the government and rebels are considered northern Uganda's best chance for peace in years.

In a recent BBC interview, Mr Kony denied the LRA had carried out atrocities, particularly on children.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and two million displaced during nearly two decades of conflict in northern Uganda.

The talks are scheduled to take place next week in the southern Sudanese town of Juba, and will be mediated by the south Sudan government.

'Worst kind' of terrorism

Mr Museveni's office said in a statement that it would grant the amnesty if the rebel leader "responds positively to the talks... and abandons terrorism".

The amnesty would be granted despite the indictments issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the statement said.

The ICC has automatic jurisdiction for crimes committed on the territory of a state which has ratified the treaty that created the body in 1998.

But President Museveni said the United Nations had no moral authority to insist on Mr Kony's prosecution.

Implicit in his statement is criticism of the UN which has failed to arrest Joseph Kony in his hideout in the Democratic Republic of Congo - despite DR Congo having the biggest peacekeeping operation in the world, says the BBC's Karen Allen in Nairobi.

The statement comes a week after the BBC's Newsnight programme broadcast an interview with the elusive Joseph Kony, in which he described himself as a "freedom fighter".

He said stories of LRA rebels cutting off people's ears or lips were Ugandan government propaganda.

He also denied reports that the LRA had kidnapped many thousands of children; turning boys into fighters or porters and using many of the girls as sex slaves.

Last year, UN humanitarian affairs chief Jan Egeland described the LRA's activities as "terrorism of the worst kind anywhere in the world" and the conflict as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

The latest stance taken by President Museveni is bound to enrage many in the international community, our correspondent says.