Kampala : The nearly two-year peace process to end the two decades' insurgency in northern Uganda has hit a fresh snag as the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) guerilla leader has not only refused to meet leaders from the war zone, but is also recruiting new fighters, a senior government peace observer said Wednesday.

Dozens of elders, religious and tribal leaders and legislators from the war-ravaged Ugandan regions travelled to a remote village on the Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) border last week to meet the elusive LRA leader Joseph Kony.

However, he shunned them and they were flown back to southern Sudan Wednesday, government officials told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Talks to end the war that has left thousands dead or mutilated and displaced almost two million people began in mid-2006 under the mediation of southern Sudan's leaders.

But, despite the signing of a series of mini-treaties on the draft peace document by the LRA delegation, Kony declined to sign the final peace treaty early this year.

The rebel leader who is holed up in a game park in the remote north-east of the former Zaire from where he fled late 2004, is instead sending his fighters to attack villages in neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR) where he is recruiting more fighters, Colonel Walter Ochola, one of the government peace officials told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The meeting was supposed to take place in the border village of Nabanga over the weekend but Kony shunned the delegation which has been flown back to southern Sudan's capital Juba, Ochola said.

"They were flown from Nabanga to Juba after waiting all these days. This means that Kony is not interested in peace and this is what we have been telling people all along. The LRA are now moving all the way to the CAR, recruiting fighters. It does not need a serious analyst to see that he is not interested in peace," Ochola told dpa by telephone.

The LRA uses the tactic of abducting and forcefully recruiting their fighters, mostly youths and children, and the UN said early April that the rebels had recruited over 250 people in southern Sudan, the DRC and the CAR in a period of one month.

Analysts say that the guerilla chief has declined to sign the final peace treaty as he fears that he will be handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) which slapped arrest warrants on him and four others in 2005 on charges of war crimes including killings, abductions, drafting of children and rape.

The Ugandan government which assured the rebels that they would not be tried under the ICC if they signed the final treaty, is now waiting for a report from the Southern Sudanese negotiators or the UN Special Envoy to the talks before it embarks on another step in the midst of the stalemate, Ochola said. (dpa)