Sudan recalls officers from south accused of aiding Uganda rebels: Kampala
BOMBO, Uganda, Oct 3 (AFP) — Uganda’s defence minister said Friday that Sudan had recalled several of its military officers from southern Sudan after they were accused by Kampala of aiding the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
In July, Ugandan officials said that visiting Sudanese Defence Minister Bekri Hassan Salih had admitted that some Sudanese military officers had given assistance to the Ugandan rebels and their leader Joseph Kony, without the knowledge of the government in Khartoum.
“We have shared our intelligence with the government of Sudan about some elements in the Sudanese army involved in rearming Kony, we knew their identities,” Ugandan Dfence Minister Amama Mbabazi told reporters.
“These elements have been withdrawn from the south and taken to Khartoum pending investigations,” Mbabazi said during a news conference in the defence ministry headquarters in Bombo, 50 kilometres (30 miles), north of Kampala.
“We have all the confidence that the Sudan government will handle the issue as they have promised they will,” Mbabazi added.
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni had in June accused Khartoum of secretly arming the LRA, warning that its support for the rebels threatened to “fundamentally change the relationship” between the two neighbours.
Khartoum expressed surprise over the accusation, which came four years after the two governments signed a formal accord to normalise strained relations, pledging to end any support for each other’s rebel groups.
The LRA has battled Museveni’s secular government since 1988, ostensibly to replace it with an administration that would enforce the Biblical 10 Commandments. The group is thought to have bases in southern Sudan.
Sudan had for its part accused Uganda of supporting the southern Sudan rebel group, Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
The chief of the Ugandan military intelligence, Colonel Nobel Mayombo, claimed in the news conference that morale in the ranks of the LRA had been dealt a blow by the army in the past two months when, he said, government troops killed 186 rebels.