JUBA, Sudan, April 1, 2008 (AFP) - Ugandan rebels have asked mediators to delay the signing of an historic peace agreement with the Kampala government citing inadequate facilities such as toilets, negotiators said on Tuesday.

David Matsanga, the chief negotiator for the Lord's Resistance Army at peace talks in Juba, told reporters he made the request by telephone to chief mediator and southern Sudan vice president Riek Machar on Monday.

'People had malaria, people were sick, but that's no reason to stop the signing of the peace talks,' Matsanga said. 'The reason is that there is nothing on the ground. There's no toilet, there's not even a single tent.'

Matsanga denied that elusive LRA leader Joseph Kony was ill and insisted he was within 30 miles of Ri-Kwangba, the jungle area on the border between Sudan and DR Congo where the rebels were told to assemble under a ceasefire agreement signed in 2006.

Last week, the rebel and government delegations agreed a final peace agreement to end Uganda's decades-old insurgency would be signed on April 5.

'You can't expect people to sign under a tree,' said Matsanga.

'Kony will sign on April 10 and the government of Uganda will sign on April 15,' he said. The dates had been proposed by Machar, he added, but declined to speculate what would happen if adequate facilities were not put in place.

'That's the problem of government of southern Sudan. They have the money. They have to meet the standards of a signing ceremony,' he said.

The Lord's Resistance Army has waged 20 years of war in northern Uganda and is notorious for raping and mutilating civilians, enlisting child soldiers and massacring thousands.

A ceasefire was struck in August 2006, paving the way for peace talks in Juba that have dragged on for more than a year and a half.

Kony has been in hiding to elude a war crimes arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court.