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New Vision (Kampala)
November 14, 2003
Posted to the web November 14, 2003
Felix Osike
Kampala
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has said the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel leader Joseph Kony wanted to surrender but has been encouraged to fight on by a tiny criminal clique of opportunists among the political class.
In a personal six-page letter to the press, the President said when Kony was defeated in the Kit Valley and in the Imatong Mountains in Southern Sudan last year, he wanted to give up the useless struggle.
"It was the criminal elements among the political class who encouraged/ advised him to spread the terrorism to Lango, Adjumani and, later, Teso. They sent him Opoka (a former Reform Agenda activist) and promised him to open another front against Uganda through Ituri in Congo. Kony, being illiterate and criminal, got encouraged to continue his killings," said the President.
Museveni also said the donors undermined Uganda's security by decreeing that the country should not spend more than 2% of GDP on defence in spite of the turbulence in the region. Last year, the donors accepted a modest increment in the defence expenditure.
Museveni said the equipment acquired from the additional money arrived last May when the dry season was ending but without the necessary accessories. ( what equipment..what could be more powerful then the UPDF's Mamba, Helicopter gunships, tanks...and even with this Museveni cannot defeat the so called Kony Rebels. .. what "equipment" ( the magic bullet so to say) which Museveni could use to do that which the tanks, Mamba's e.t.c could not do in 18 years?.. Museveni should stop deceiving us ...MK
"This is why Uganda will have to manufacture some of the vital munitions so that we are no longer blackmailed by events outside our country," he said.
