Museveni accuses United Nations of Preserving terrorism in DRC

President Yoweri Museveni has said that the United Nations is responsible for preserving terrorism in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

On December, 8, suspected Allied Democratic Forces(ADF) rebels killed at least fourteen Tanzanian United Nations peacekeepers and wounded 53 others in a raid on their base in the North Kivu province of DRC in what was been described as the deadliest attack on UN forces in the recent years.

Museveni on Tuesday met a UN Special Investigations Team led by Dmitry Titov into the circumstances under which the MONUSCO peacekeepers were.

Titov was until recently the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for the Rule of Law and Security Institutions in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. He was accompanied among others by the UN Resident Coordinator, Ms. Rosa Malango.

“The UN operation in D.R. Congo and to some extent in Somalia was conservation of terrorism. The terrorists are weak. They have had freedom of movement and space but made no progress in their ventures. If they were strong they would have made a big impact,” Museveni told the team.

The commander in chief of the armed forces in Uganda said that it should be people of the affected countries to always fight to defeat terrorism other than foreign assistance.

“Friendly forces like the UPDF should come in not to replace the people, but to strengthen them,” he said, adding that it must be the citizens to clear their country.

President Museveni informed the UN team that Uganda is currently host to 500,000 Congolese refugees on top of one million others from South Sudan.

He cited an example of Uganda that was assisted by Tanzania during the struggle to remove Idi Amin from power adding that during the second part of the protracted people’s struggle, Uganda requested Tanzania to ‘empower us’ in clearing the challenge at hand between 1981 and 1986.

Museveni noted that if the local groups in Congo and Somalia cannot work with the population to guard their countries, the friendly forces should come in with enough manpower to clean up the affected areas.

He noted that if neighbouring D.R. Congo had enough numbers, they would have succeeded in solving the problem, observing that the Kinshasa government has a combination of conventional, irregular and terrorist groups on its territory.

“Those terrorists like the ADF kill non-combatants who are soft targets,” he retorted.

Titov, commended President Museveni for contributing towards the peace process in Somalia adding that the UN is looking forward to Uganda’s assistance in finding the answers into the killing of the Tanzanian peacekeepers in Eastern DRC recently.

He observed that ADF is a common enemy with a task of removing them relying on MONUSCO.

The volatile North Kivu province in DRC borders Uganda , Rwanda and other provinces including Ituri to the north and South Kivu to the South and has been a battle ground for a number of rival armed ethnic groups since 1998.