Ugandan president says Sudan tried to overthrow him with rebel backing

NAIROBI, Aug 28 (AFP) — Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said Saturday he supported Sudan’s southern rebel group because the Khartoum government wanted to overthrow him by backing insurgents based in his country.

Museveni explained that the Sudan government started it all by supporting a Uganda-based rebel group called the Lord’s Resistant Army (LRA), in order to overthrow his government, thereby forcing Uganda to back the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in southern Sudan.

The LRA has been fighting Museveni’s government since 1988 from bases in northern Uganda and southern Sudan with the aim of replacing his regime with one based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.

“We supported SPLA because they (Khartoum) supported that stupid group (LRA). It was a big miscalculation by Sudan,” Museveni told a press conference in Nairobi, where he is attending a three-day summit for the East African Community.

“Had they not supported that group, although we sympathised with the black people of southern Sudan, I don’t think we would have been in a point to support (SPLA leader John) Garang, the way we did,” he said.

“First they (Sudanese government) thought they would overthrow us, then they thought they would intimidate us” by supporting LRA, Museveni said, describing the LRA rebellion as a small problem.

Museveni said the SPLA hds now been empowered to negotiate with Khartoum resulting to the near-completion of peace talks in Kenya aimed at ending 21 years of conflict that has claimed at least 1.5 million lives and displaced four million people.

Since 2002 the Sudanese government, which had long been accused of harbouring and arming the LRA, has allowed Ugandan forces to conduct operations against the rebels in areas of southern Sudan.