Uganda’s army denied a report on Monday that its troops were massing on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), despite a deal on the weekend meant to reduce tensions between the two nations.
United Nations-sponsored Radio Okapi in eastern DRC quoted military sources as saying Ugandan soldiers had set up camp at several points along the tense frontier, where a British oil contractor was killed last month in a gun battle with DRC forces.
The Congolese military was said to be on high alert.
”It is completely not true that we have deployed in the said areas at a time when the two countries are engaged in talks,” Uganda military spokesperson Major Felix Kulayigye told Reuters.
”We are simply monitoring our borders because some indisciplined Congolese soldiers have attacked the Ugandan territory in the last month.”
At a summit in Arusha, northern Tanzania, on Saturday, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his DRC counterpart Joseph Kabila agreed to end their border dispute and make more efforts to stamp out rebel groups blamed for destabilising eastern DRC.
UN peacekeepers are struggling to preserve a shaky ceasefire in eastern DRC after a dissident general accused government troops on Friday of breaking a truce.
The mineral-rich east has long been a tinderbox of wars and ethnic conflicts and Uganda has twice invaded DRC, saying it wanted to flush out guerrillas based in its dense forests. — Reuters