Looks like another war on SADC countries is in the offing, just so
Mugabe is removed. The imperialist agents have their eyes fixed on selling SADC
countries to the west unless the Southern African leaders take radical mesures.
The so called NSHR is calling on the ICC to investigate Sam Njoma of Namibia.
Remeber Sam Njoma was one among those who scuttled Imperialists' drive to
overthrow late President Kabila of the DRC after he fell out with his erstwhile
allies, Rwanda and Uganda. Read them NSHR, a whites' financed and driven tool,
on this link:
http://www.namibian.com.na/2007/August/national/07AAFDD7B1.html
I see demand for Kony and his LRA/M rising and playing crutial role here very
soon, since imperialists are after Mugabe, and would rather DRC be pocketted
first, then Zimbabwe, Namibia, and finally, South Africa!!
SADC should be very very alert here. The captured UPDF could have been on a
reconnaissance misson. Why should the DRC army capture these soldiers if not
tipped off of their subterranean activities in their country?
And even the LRA/M, as Mu7's troops may already be deep inside the DRC,
probably a stonthrow away from their bases.
Mu7 is not a politican, not even an economist, but one who loves war, and who
will die in battle the way I look at it.
I may just be reading to much into what is going on in the region. But, don't
disregard the prediction yet!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Hand over soldiers today, Uganda tells Congo army
FRANK NYAKAIRU KAMPALA TODAYS meeting between the Ugandan and
Congolese regional army commanders will have failed if four captured UPDF
soldiers are not released, the military said yesterday.
We have confidence that the soldiers will be handed over to Brig. Hudson
Mukasa tomorrow, said Defence and Military Spokesman Felix Kulayigye. In the
unlikely event that they are not returned, then we will see what to do.
Brig. Mukasa, the commander of the 2nd Division, which is in charge of
western Uganda, will meet in Bundibugyo today with his Congolese counterpart
based in Bunia in eastern DR Congo.
The meeting will also discuss Fridays pre-dawn attack on a barge - a long boat
with a flat bottom used for carrying heavy loads on rivers or canals - on Lake
Albert by what Uganda says were Congolese government troops.
The attack that left a British contractor dead capped a week of tension
between Kinshasa and Kampala. The tensions began after the Congolese military,
or FARDC, captured the four UPDF soldiers on July 29.
The soldiers should have been handed over on Thursday, Maj. Kulayigye said.
Accompanying Brig. Mukasa are several intelligence officials. Representatives
of the UN peacekeeping force, Monuc, from the Congolese cities of Kinshasa and
Kisangani will also attend.
The Ugandan soldiers were captured as they patrolled the Albert waters and
are being held by Congolese troops in Bunia. The lake, which lies on the floor
of the western arm of the Great African Rift Valley, straddles part of the
Uganda-Congo border in an area where two companies, Heritage of Canada and
Tullow of the UK, are prospecting for oil.
The Friday attack came as Uganda negotiated the release of the four soldiers,
prompting a swift diplomatic protest to Kinshasa.
Three armed patrol boats from the DR Congo attacked a barge stationed 2.1km
from the international border killing a senior oil surveyor identified as Mr
Carl Nefdt from Britain, Mr Daudi Migereko, the energy and mineral development
minister who also is holding the foreign affairs portfolio, told reporters in
Kampala on Saturday after handing a protest note to Congolese Charge dAffaires
Biselele Wa Mutshipaya.
We want the Congolese government and the United Nations which has troops [in
the Congo] to explain these two incidents, he said. The Congolese diplomat
described the situation as a serious problem which both states should solve
quickly.
The UPDF repulsed the early morning raid the first such attack on an oil
interest in Uganda, a country becoming a key frontier in the hunt for crude oil
on a continent where West African sources have held sway. Some unconfirmed
reports now say that the UPDF killed about 10 Congolese soldiers in hot
pursuit.
The Uganda government is anxious to restore security so that oil exploration
can move forward smoothly. To calm things, Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga and
Chief of Defence Forces Aronda Nyakairima yesterday arrived on the shores of
Lake Albert and started a series of meetings in Bugoma, a landing site in Hoima
District.
They were to meet separately with Heritage oil workers, district officials, and
with the local communities to assure them of safety.
This follows Ugandas boosting of its troop presence in the area at the
weekend after the Congolese reportedly did the same on their side of the border.
We are not responding to Congolese forces that have heavily deployed on the
other side of the lake; ours is simply protective deployment for the people and
the oil installations, Maj. Kulayigye said.
He added that the army would make sure there was no repeat of indiscipline.
Whoever crosses [the border] will be responsible for the consequences.
Suspicious attacks
The Congolese commander on the ground said his forces came under fire from a
Ugandan army naval patrol boat and only responded in self-defence.
Heritage's Uganda manager Bryan Westwood said four men armed with
rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles landed in a boat on Thursday near
the Heritage camp on the Ugandan shores of Lake Albert.
They spoke briefly to Heritage staff before leaving. "They said our boat was
in Congolese waters and we should move it along," Mr Westwood said from the
firm's camp 250km northwest of Kampala. He denied the boat was in Congolese
waters.
Heritage owns two concessions in a 50-50 partnership with UK-based Tullow Oil
on the lake's eastern shores. Tullow also wholly owns one block. A senior
government official said yesterday that Kinshasa suspects that we are
encroaching on their oil wells hence they attacked hoping to send a message.
But Mr Kabagambe Kaliisa, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Energy
and Mineral Development, dismissed this charge. All the oil wells where we
have started work are clearly in Uganda but in future we might have joint
projects with the DR Congo government, he said.
In any case, Kampala is furious that DR Congo did not use the US-facilitated
Tripartite Plus Commission that brings together the two countries plus Rwanda
and Burundi to solve regional security problems.
That is a question asked only after the fact. For their part, the Congolese
say the Ugandans have been provocative. Congo Defence Minister Chikez Diemu
said he did not believe the gunmen who killed Nefdt were Congolese soldiers.
"There are many armed elements and bandits in the region, but this attack, I
do not think it was done by Congolese soldiers," Mr Diemu said. "If we find
that it was, those responsible will be punished."
And on the captured Ugandan soldiers, Mr Diemu said FARDC forces arrested
them on Congolese soil. "They have been frequently doing this," he said.
Kampala disputes that saying, for example, that the ill-fated barge was
carrying out a seismic survey some 2.1km from the border when it came under
attack.
But the authorities declined to make public Global Positioning System (GPS)
co-ordinates to prove the barge was indeed in Ugandan waters. At the
appropriate time the co-ordinates will be made public but for now what we are
trying to do is to solve this problem, Mr Migereko said.
Oil agreement
Six years before Uganda ganged up with Rwanda to oust the Mobutu Sese Seko
regime, Kampala and Kinshasa signed a bilateral deal on their shared oil zones.
The 1990 agreement foresaw a joint concessionaire operating along the common
border.
It also considered a joint investment by both countries with a view to
sharing revenue.
Significantly, both countries agreed to view the national boundaries as
non-existent for the purposes of oil exploitation based on goodwill and
regular consultation.
But as Ugandas oil industry takes off, DR Congo has failed so far to fulfil
its end of the bargain.
We have written to them inviting their exploration teams to come and see
what we are doing but there has not been any reply to this specific request,
Energy Minister Migereko said.
Heritage, which has owned acreage in Uganda for 10 years, also has
concessions on the Congolese side of the lake, although it has yet to start
exploration there. Whether Congo has what it takes to kick-start the oil
business in what is called the Albertine Graben remains to be seen. The country
is yet to fully recover from the decades of misrule it suffered under Mobutu
and the civil war of the late 1990s.
It ranks seventh on the list of the world's most vulnerable or unstable
states after Iraq, Sudan, and Somalia. Uganda ranks 15th out of 177 countries.
Unfinished business
Even within the Tripartite Plus Commission framework, Uganda and Congo have
failed to resume full diplomatic relations after they were severed in 1998 when
the UPDF entered that country to fight rebels opposed to President Musevenis
rule but instead got sucked into a civil war until 2003.
For its part, Kampala accuses Kinshasa of doing too little to flush the
Lords Resistance Army rebels out of their base in Garamba Forest in
northeastern Congo.
DR Congo has tied any action, including allowing the UPDF to pursue the LRA
inside its territory, to Ugandas paying reparations amounting to $10 billion,
a fine Kampala says is too high.
The money accrues from a case in the International Court of Justice where DR
Congo successfully sued Uganda for illegally invading its territory and looting
its mineral wealth during the five-year civil war.
Incidents on L. Albert
Feb. 22, 2006: DRC army kidnaps 2 Ugandan fishermen with 9 boat engines
June 20, 2006: DRC army boats cross into Ugandan waters illegally
July 10, 2006: DRC army rounds up 30 Ugandan fishermen with 18 boats and
detains them for two week
lFeb. 17, 2007: Fisheries Officer Ssezi Tibasiima is taken captive by DRC
army for 3 days
July 29, 2007: Four UPDF marine soldiers are taken captive by DRC army
Aug. 3, 2007: 3 DRC armed patrol boats attack a Heritage Oil barge, one oil
worker killed
Source: UPDF
Additional reporting by Ausi Balyesiima and Agencies
ocii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Why would Congolese troops do such a thing,
when there literary hundreds of rebel groups in the region?
Mu7 started what eventually is going to seal his fate!!
One cannot conduct a "revolution" on hate of a particular people. If even in
Tanzania he is hated; there are many Rwandese and Burundian Hutus who cannot
wait to get their hands on his balls; add to these, Congolese who literary will
skin him alife should the opportunity arise; then throw into the mix, Uganda's
North and East!!
I don't see the guy retiring and living in peace. Never!!
As things/politics develop, those who will continue destabilizing Africa and
Africans are heading straight toward paying heavy price. For, Africans will
have nothing to lose but their continent that they must die for.
That is what I read in this development.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
UPDF takes over L. Albert security Ausi Balyesiima & FRANK NYAKAIRU
Hoima/KAMPALA
The UPDF has taken over the security of Lake Albert following a deadly armed
attack on a barge carrying an oil drilling team on Friday morning.
A senior British oil surveyor Carl Nefdt was killed in the attack.
Lake Albert is shared between Uganda and DR Congo.
It was generally agreed that we review the entire security arrangement as
the government forces will take over from private security organisations,
Energy and Mineral Development Minister Daudi Migereko said yesterday. He said
he had met with Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga and all the oil excavating
companies.
The armed attack on Kingfisher-2, close to the Uganda-Congo border, was blamed
on Congolese government troops, the FARDC.
A senior security officer who declined to be named said a group of armed
Congolese soldiers around 5.00pm on Friday approached the Heritage Oil and Gas
experts near Bundibugyo who were surveying oil deposits and told them that they
had entered their territory and advised them to leave.
At around 11p.m. the armed Congolese soldiers aboard two boats came back to
check whether the Heritage Oil and Gas experts had left. But the Heritage Oil
experts had communicated to their base at Kingfisher in Kyangwali, Hoima
District and a team of armed security personnel left to rescue the situation
deep in the lake near Bundibugyo District at night.
In the process the armed Congolese soldiers who had identified themselves
earlier, started shooting at the Heritage rescue team which resulted in a heavy
gunfire.
But Chikez Diemu, the Congolese defence minister, told Reuters he did not
believe his soldiers were responsible.
"There are many armed elements and bandits in the region, but this attack, I
do not think it was done by Congolese soldiers," Diemu told Reuters by
telephone. "If we find that it was, those responsible will be punished."
Heritage Oil Corp yesterday issued a statement on its official site saying
oil drilling would continue despite the attack. The attack could worsen the
relations between the two countries.
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