Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said he doubted the United States’s strategies in Iraq, but he supported the war that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein blindly, Ugandan Information Minister Nsaba Buturo said on Wednesday.
”Yes, he [Museveni] said that he did not know much about the reasons given by the Americans to invade Iraq, but he feared that if weapons of mass destruction were in Iraq, they would find their way to Uganda. That is why he was compelled to support the coalition,” Buturo said by telephone.
Buturo said Museveni reasoned that Saddam ”was a friend to [Sudanese President] Omar el Beshir and if these weapons found their way to Sudan, they would end up with northern Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army [LRA] rebels and this compelled him to support it, though he did not know other reasons the Americans were giving as basis for the intervention”.
Uganda and Sudan have traded accusations of supporting each other’s rebel groups, with Uganda accusing Sudan of supporting the LRA rebels, while Sudan counter-accuses Uganda of supporting the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army.
Buturo was clarifying press reports that quoted Museveni as telling a military academy in Jinja on Tuesday that he blindly supported the US-led invasion of Iraq.
”I supported the Americans in Iraq, but I didn’t even know what they were fighting for,” independent daily The Monitor quoted Museveni as saying in its Wednesday’s banner headline story.
”What I knew is that Saddam was a friend of Beshir, and Beshir was my enemy,” the paper quoted Museveni as saying in a lecture inaugurating the Senior Staff and Command College at Kimaka in Jinja, 80km east of Kampala.
Museveni said the Americans claimed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
”I don’t know whether it was true or not,” Museveni said, but pointed out that the strategic errors made by the Americans in Iraq had forced him to regret his support of the coalition forces.
Museveni listed some of the strategic American errors he regretted as being the US decision to appoint Paul Bremer as governor in Iraq and the demobilisation of one million Iraqi soldiers.
”It has now turned out like I am in more problems. The Americans went and appointed this man Bremer. I was in Washington, I told them I was a member of the coalition, but we never discussed that,” Museveni said.
The 90-minute lecture was to 31 senior military officers on organisation, discipline and deployment of military forces.
Uganda, Rwanda and Eritrea are the only three African nations that announced their support for coalition forces against Iraq, with Kampala promising to send troops to help in the war that ousted the Iraqi leader. — Sapa-AFP