This weekend -- July 12-13 -- negotiators will try once again to get terrorist rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, the LRA, to keep their word on their commitment to surrender to the government of Uganda for reconciliatory treatment. The talks will be held at a remote location in southwestern Sudan in a region rife with geopolitical pandemonium. I have written previously on this blog on the twenty year war that ravaged Uganda, the country where I was born.

It is, of course, hard to talk turkey and negotiate with Joseph Kony, who believes, among other things, that he is receiving "messages" from The Holy Spirit. "Messages," we cannot fail to note, that okay the conscription of child soldiers and sex slavery for young girls. But if we have learned anything in recent days it is that negotiation - even with those perceived to our sworn enemy - should never be taken off the table altogether.

The International Criminal Court, ICC, has already indicted Kony. The enigmatic rebel and his cohorts are wanted in The Hague for crimes against humanity. In the spirit of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, and, moreover, a sheer existential weariness of the situation as well as a desire to bring peace to the northern Ugandan countryside, Uganda has instigated peace talks offering accords that would have the east African nation creating a special war crimes tribunal that would apparently supplant the much-harsher ICC indictment. A nice deal if you can get it, quite frankly. In the two years of talks between officials from the Ugandan government and the LRA, there has been, mirabile dictu, a nearly unprecedented - at least in recent memory -- peace.

Unfortunately, Kony, who was slated to finalize the agreement with his signature, failed to show in April and May. Such are the vagaries of War and Peace. An unnamed 18 year old whose family has been affected by the rebel atrocities tells the Institute For War And Peace Reporting:

"'We don't want any war again. Those who say peace talks have failed and are bound to collapse ... want to keep us in a circle of poverty.

"'We don't want this useless war to continue. It must stop so that we also compete with other regions in terms of education, health and development.'"

Here's to hoping that this weekend, finally, the elusive Kony shows his face and graces the papers with his signature.

[Image: International Criminal Court]