JEM denies reports of deal to setup military base in Uganda

August 15, 2010 (KHARTOUM) — Darfur rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), has strongly denied the veracity of a report published by a pro-government media source on its delegates visiting Uganda and striking a deal with its president to setup a military base there and receive arms supplies.

On Saturday, Sudan Media Center (SMC), which is closely linked to the country’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), carried a report alleging that a delegation of JEM comprising Ahmad Adam Bakhit, Mansur Arbab and Ahmad Nuqua Lisan had “secretly visited Kampala last week” and met with Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni “in the presence of an SPLM’s representative”.

SPLM is the ruling political party in the semi-autonomous region of south Sudan and former guerilla movement that fought two decades of civil war with north Sudan. The war, which was fueled by different ethnicities, ideologies and coveted natural resources, ended in 2005 when the SPLM and the ruling party in north Sudan, the National Congress Party (NCP), signed a peace agreement in 2005.

According to SMC’s “reliable” sources, Museveni had pledged to setup a military base for JEM in Uganda and supply Darfur rebels with arms. SMC’s sources further elaborated that Museveni had agreed to assist JEM and provide it with all necessary support including “delivery of weapons, issuance of travelling documents and passports to facilitate easier moves for JEM members into other countries.”

Also, SMC sources reported that Museveni had proposed Salva Kiir in his capacity as Sudan’s first vice-president and president of south Sudan to restore JEM’s relations with the countries in the region, in reference to Chad which recently severed its longstanding ties with JEM after normalizing its relations with Khartoum. SMC sources suggested a link between JEM delegations’s alleged meeting with Ugandan president and the two-day visit of Slava Kiir to Kampala last week.

“JEM categorically denies the reports appearing in local press in Khartoum on Sunday 15 August, which says that a delegation of JEM met with the Ugandan president Museveni,” declared a press release on JEM’s website.

The movement went on to discredit the report as “a flat-out lie” and a “figment of the imagination of SMC” which “built a career in fabricating news and concocting tales and theatres.”

JEM claimed that the government was behind this report to cover up its “conclusively-evidenced” involvement in supporting groups rebelling against the Government of Southern Sudan.

Last week, south Sudan’s authorities impounded a Khartoum-destined helicopter in the Upper Nile state and said it was carrying loyalists of Gorge Athor, a renegade general who is leading a rebellion against the government of south Sudan.

JEM, which on 10 May 2008 staged an unprecedented attack against Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, says that the “lie” also aims to “blindfold eyes from the war crimes being perpetrated day and night by the regime in Darfur refugee camps”.

Sudanese authorities continue to deny international aid groups access to Kalma refugee camp in southern Darfur after recent clashes there between opponents and proponents of Darfur peace talks claimed at least five lives and worsened humanitarian situation in the camp.

(ST)