Sudan admits some rogue soldiers helped Ugandan rebels: Kampala

KAMPALA, July 29 (AFP) — Ugandan officials said Tuesday that a visiting Sudanese minister had admitted that some Sudanese military officers had given assistance to Ugandan rebels and their leader Joseph Kony, without the knowledge of the government in Khartoum.

“They (Sudanese) conceded that some army officers had resumed contact with Kony for purely personal profit,” said a senior official, who had been present during a meeting between Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Sudan’s Defence Minister Bekri Hassan Salih.

“They said investigations were carried out after Uganda raised the matter and that individual officers named in the probe will be punished,” said the Ugandan official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Salih handed Museveni a letter from his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Beshir.

Kony leads the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has battled Museveni’s secular government since 1988, ostensibly to replace it with an administration that it said would enforce the Biblical 10 Commandments.

The group is thought to have bases in southern Sudan.

Last month, Museveni 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 “astonishment” 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.

Sudan had for its part accused Uganda of supporting the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).