Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has predicted that the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony will be totally routed by April next year.

"We are sending back the people of Lango and Teso to their homes. By April, those in Acholi will also go home because we want those ones to stay until Kony is totally routed from southern Sudan," Museveni was quoted by state-owned newspaper The New Vision as saying on Saturday.

Speaking to local radio Capital FM's Morning Crew on Friday, Museveni said the war in northern Uganda would have ended had donors dictated on the defense budget.

"The mistake we made was under-spending on the army because they (donors) said, 'don't spend more than 1.9 percent of Gross Domestic Product on the army.' As a consequence, our people in the north and the west, and our friends were telling us not to spend enough on the army," he said.

He said that the government first listened to the donors for sometime, wanting to see whether it could move with them until 2002, adding that in 2002, the government cut 23 percent from all other ministries to defense and ignored the protests and as a consequence, the war in the north was in its last days.

"You can see that these mistakes were definitely caused by interference in our decision-making because of that little money they give us. I don't mind getting some little money, but it must not interfere with my decision-making," he added.

The LRA rebels, based in southern Sudan, have killed tens of thousands of civilians, abducted over 20,000 children and displaced over 1.4 million people in their 19-year rebellion in northern Uganda.

The International Criminal Court issued warrants in September for five top rebel commanders for their crimes of murder, torture and mutilation, abduction, sexual violence, forced recruitment and killing.

Source: Xinhua