Fri, 1 Feb 2008 06:55:38 -0800 (PST)



By Leo Odera Omolo.

UGANDA has categorically denied the popular claims making the round in some parts of western Kenya that it has deployed its troops in its neighbour to help quell post election violence in the country.

In a paid up advertisement in Kenya’s influential daily, the DAILY NATION Ugandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “the government and people of Uganda wish to reassure our brothers and sisters in Kenya that there is no truth whatsoever in the allegations that we have deployed troops in Kenya or even engaged in activities that would endanger the lives of Kenyans !!.

“On the contrary Uganda is hosting a good number of Kenyan refugees and is doing everything to ensure their safety and welfare during their time of need,” he advert says.

Some residents of Busia, Bondo, Bungoma, Suba and Migori districts which are sharing the common borders between Kenya and Uganda, both on the mainland and along the waters of Lake Victory where some of the epicenters of the post-election violence, had claimed that some Ugandan troops had been seen in some parts of both Nyanza and Western Provinces.

These claims were backed up by two members of parliament from the region who alleged that their constituents had witnessed the arrival of the Ugandan soldiers who had been deployed along the Kenyan security personnel.

This writer took time and visited some places like Sori in Karungu Bay in Migori district about 300 kilometres to the Southwest of here, and after thorough and painstaking investigations, found no trace of any single Ugandan soldier in these areas. It was the same when a similar trip took him to Bungoma and Busia districts in Western Province

The two MPs, were Dr. Oburu Odinga ( Bondo) and Hon. Chris Okemo ( Nambale)

“What might have transpired and sparked off this kind of rumours was the Kenyan Government is inclusion of the Game Scouts and Rangers in the security operations. The Game Wardens are employed by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and are armed and wear uniforms which are similar to those worn by members of the Uganda People Defense Force (UPDF)

The KWS Game Scouts might have confused the fear gripped locals to mistaken them to be Ugandan troops!!

The land-locked Uganda, which uses the Kenya Ports of Mombasa for the bulk of its exports and imports, has been hit hard by the post-election violence and the government in Kampala said it would continue to stand by Kenya in the quest for peaceful and lasting solutions.

Meanwhile details have emerged about President Yoweri Keguta Museveni recent whistle stop diplomacy which saw him shuttle between Kampala and Nairobi in a vain attempt to broker the peace between President Mwai Kibaki and his Arch-rival Raila Amolo Odinga

While in Kenya Museveni, those who followed his diplomatic foray closely have revealed that he met top leadership of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), former President of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano, a senior Uganda UN diplomat Anna Tubaijuka, and several head of diplomatic missions in Kenya

Museveni also had a face to face encounter with the charismatic ( ODM leader Raila Odinga, Pentagon member William Ruto and the newly appointed Vice President Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka as well as the African Union (AU) mediator Kofi Annan before meeting President Kibaki.

But with the ODM, there has been suspicions that Museveni had come to Nairobi on mischievous mission to scuttle the mediation efforts by Annan and two other eminent African persons.

The ODM leaders, were especially uncomfortable with the fact that Museveni hasty arrival was delayed to coinside with Kofi Annan’s suggesting that the Ugandan leader had wanted to conduct his meetings first and to pre-empt Anan’s mediation process

Sources have confided to us that Museveni’s first encounter with the ODM leaders took place against the background of this suspicion.

The story is told of how Museveni had hurriedly arrived at a meeting room with ODM leaders at the Hotel Intercontinental while armed with a 23 page document with only one copy for Raila Odinga!! He appeared not keen to engage the other Pentagon members”

The Centerpiece of Museveni is proposal was a judicial commission of inquiry by internationally procured retired judge from the Commonwealth countries to investigate the allegation of fraud in the disputed election, before a re-run of one presidential election, but the ODM leaders refused to buy his ideas.

Interestingly, only a week after Kenya’s hosty disputed election and discredited results were announced, the Ugandamn Head of State carelessly admitted to a Ugandan newspaper that he “nearly” went to war with Kenya in the 1980s because that country was interfering in Uganda’s internal affairs

This comment alone was enough to reduce the already shaky diplomacy in the East African geopolitics. As the current chair of the Commonwealth and the East African community (EAC), Museveni has all the excuses under the moon to join President Kibaki, for a cup of tea

But they the two presidents are not telling Kenyans is what Museveni'sinterventions prop is really about.

And of course the history of Uganda’s international relations in the past two decades has proven that that Museveni is not an honourable and trustworthy neighbour by any standard

Under Museveni, Uganda’s military excursions have covered the democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda (within and outside Congo. International borders) and Sudan. If the recent stories about alleged Ugandan troops taking position along its border with Kenya following post- election crisis are true, then the East African community must be undergoing a new awkward international dimensions