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Leader of
the Lord's Resistance Army Joseph Kony speaks to journalists
after a meeting
with U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland at Ri-Kwamba in
southern Sudan
November 12, 2006. (Credit: Reuters/Stuart Price)
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(Reuters) - Uganda will head a new four-nation military force to capture Joseph Kony, the fugitive warlord whose global profile has soared in recent days due to a celebrity-backed Internet campaign to bring him to justice.
Announcing
the creation of the regional military force on Friday, Ugandan Defense Minister
Crispus Kiyonga said it had been conceived before the web campaign to hunt down
Kony and the remnants of his Lord's Resistance Army took off.
"We
are creating a brigade of about 5,000 troops, with the commander provided by
Uganda," Kiyonga told reporters. The Democratic Republic of Congo, Central
African Republic and South Sudan would take part in the force, he said.
One hundred
U.S. military advisers deployed to Uganda were already helping hunt for Kony,
but the task force needed more international support, Kiyonga said.
"We
still need more help because these soldiers are moving big distances, most of
the time on foot. If we could have airlift capacity it would make things
faster," he said.
A video
about Kony posted on YouTube by a California film-maker has been viewed by tens
of millions of people, promoted on Twitter with tags that include #Kony2012 and
endorsed by the likes of Justin Bieber, George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey.
The
30-minute video has brought unprecedented international attention to Kony,
accused of terrorizing northern Uganda for two decades, but it rubbed raw scars
when it was screened this week in Lira, a small town haunted by LRA atrocities.
Kony is
wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, accused of abducting
children to use as fighters and sex slaves and said to have a fondness for
hacking off limbs.
Violence
has subsided since 2005 and Kony is believed now to command only hundreds of
followers, scattered in remote jungle hideouts.
The defense
minister said the LRA had been reduced to a force of between 200 and 250
fighters split up into groups of about 10 and 20.
Kiyonga
called for international assistance for the task force in the form of
technology, equipment and wages for troops.
"Those
who can help us should help us so that we move faster, with technology and
equipment," he said. It was not clear when the force would start its
operations.
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