Ugandan envoy in Sudan to discuss terror

KHARTOUM, Sept 21 (AFP) — Ugandan Defence Minister Amama Mbabazi on Sunday conveyed a message from President Yoweri Museveni to Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on bilateral relations and fighting terror.

“I am here as a special envoy of President Yoweri Museveni to deliver to President Omar al-Beshir a message on bilateral relations and on fighting terrorism,” Mbabazi told reporters after talks with Beshir.

There were no further details from the Ugandan minister who arrived here late Saturday accompanied by military intelligence chief Colonel Nobre Mayombo.

Sources at the presidential palace said the Ugandan envoys would return home later Sunday.

Sudanese and Ugandan observers abandoned in mid-August a joint efforts to prevent cross-border rebel activities after Kampala charged that Khartoum had resumed support for Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) guerillas.

Sudan formally protested over the Ugandan army allegations.

The LRA has been fighting since 1988 with a declared aim of replacing Museveni’s secular government with one based on the biblical Ten Commandments.

Kampala and Khartoum failed to renew on May 31 a three-month protocol directed against LRA and the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

The protocol allowed Kampala’s forces to track down the LRA inside Sudan, while committing Uganda to ban the activities of the SPLA.