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[KAMPALA, 6Â September 2006]Â - Ugandan rebels hidden in Congo will not surrender unless the International Criminal Court (ICC) drops arrest warrants for them, the deputy commander of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) said late on Tuesday. Vincent Otti -- one of five LRA leaders named last year by the world court in its first indictments -- said his fighters would stay in the bush as long as the warrants were active. "No rebel will come out unless the ICC revokes the indictments," he told Kampala's KFM radio by satellite phone. The LRA are notorious for massacring and mutilating civilians and abducting thousands of children during a two-decade insurgency that has uprooted nearly 2 million people in northern Uganda. But under a truce last week that has raised hopes of an end to one of Africa's longest civil wars, the rebels have two weeks to gather at two assembly points in southern Sudan while negotiations continue in the southern capital Juba. Uganda's government has offered all the LRA amnesty if the Juba talks reach a final peace deal -- putting Kampala squarely at odds with prosecutors in The Hague. Cristian Palme, an ICC spokesman, said the world court had no comment on Otti's remarks. "We have made statements in the past, they still stand," Palme said. "This peace process remains at an early stage. Justice and peace have worked together so far and will continue to work together," he added. The ICC has said leaders of the cult-like rebels should face war crime charges and has urged the execution of its arrest warrants issued last year. Last week, deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she still hoped the LRA leaders would be arrested. However, with no police force to hunt down its targets, the ICC must rely on Ugandan, Sudanese and former southern Sudanese rebel troops to bring them to justice. Otti told listeners he was already in the area of the western assembly point, Ri-Kwangba, near the border with eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). But he said his security was assured, and that he believed talks would succeed. "Being in Ri-Kwangba does not mean I am out. Ri-Kwangba is a place where there is LRA only, it is in the bush," Otti said. "Talks also can bring peace ... it happens in some other countries, in DR Congo, in Sudan, so what about in Uganda? People should be with hope, we are coming home very soon." Otti and his elusive boss Joseph Kony were last known to be hiding in Congo's Garamba forest, and Ugandan negotiators said they had no information any rebels had left DRC. "We are concerned they are not doing that yet," the Ugandan team's spokesman Captain Paddy Ankunda told Reuters. Dominic Ongwen, another of the guerrilla leaders wanted by the ICC, met Ugandan army officers for four hours on Monday in the highest-level contact yet between the LRA and the military. Talks were due to resume in Juba after the chief mediator, southern Sudan's Vice President Riek Machar, returned from the other assembly point, Owiny-ki-Bul, on Tuesday, aides said.