Museveni agrees to Libya mediation
Mar 14, 2011
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has accepted to be on the African Union (AU) committee set up to handle the Libyan crisis.
By AHMED KATEREGGA
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has accepted to be on the African Union (AU) committee set up to handle the Libyan crisis.
The Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Gadaffi, is facing widespread uprisings which started last month.
The committee set up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last Thursday is scheduled to hold its inaugural meeting in Mauritania on March 19.
The other heads of State on the team are South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, Gen. Sassou Nguesso of Congo, Amadou Toumani Toure from Mali and Mouhammed Abdul Aziz from Mauritania. The AU commission president, Jean Peng and the incumbent AU chairperson, Teodore Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, will also be on the committee.
Foreign affairs minister Sam Kuteesa told New vision yesterday that after the preparatory meeting in Mauritania, the committee will proceed to Tripoli where they will forward AU proposals to Gadaffi.
They will later find a way of also communicating with the rebels based in Benghazi.
Kuteesa, however, said the heads of state may not personally be present, but would be represented.
He supported the AU decision to vehemently oppose a no fly zone and foreign military intervention in the Libya conflict.
France had pressed for a no-fly zone “as fast as possible†to prevent government planes from bombing civilians in the rebel held areas.
Kutesa was optimistic that the Libyan crisis would be solved by Africans themselves.
Uganda’s relations with Libya date back to the Second World War when East Africans under the seventh Battalion of King’s African Riffles fought side by side with the allies against Italians in their colony.
In 1970, Libya gave Uganda several scholarships through the late Prince Badru Kakungulu and supreme Mufti Zubair Kayongo. The first beneficiaries were the late former mufti, Sheikh Saad Ibrahim Luwemba, and city tycoon Habib Kagimu.
Libya also supported Amin’s regime against Tanzanian forces and since 1981, it supported Ugandan rebels in the liberation war that was spearheaded by the National Resistance Movement/National Resistance Army under President Yoweri Museveni.
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has accepted to be on the African Union (AU) committee set up to handle the Libyan crisis.
The Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Gadaffi, is facing widespread uprisings which started last month.
The committee set up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last Thursday is scheduled to hold its inaugural meeting in Mauritania on March 19.
The other heads of State on the team are South Africa’s Jacob Zuma, Gen. Sassou Nguesso of Congo, Amadou Toumani Toure from Mali and Mouhammed Abdul Aziz from Mauritania. The AU commission president, Jean Peng and the incumbent AU chairperson, Teodore Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, will also be on the committee.
Foreign affairs minister Sam Kuteesa told New vision yesterday that after the preparatory meeting in Mauritania, the committee will proceed to Tripoli where they will forward AU proposals to Gadaffi.
They will later find a way of also communicating with the rebels based in Benghazi.
Kuteesa, however, said the heads of state may not personally be present, but would be represented.
He supported the AU decision to vehemently oppose a no fly zone and foreign military intervention in the Libya conflict.
France had pressed for a no-fly zone “as fast as possible†to prevent government planes from bombing civilians in the rebel held areas.
Kutesa was optimistic that the Libyan crisis would be solved by Africans themselves.
Uganda’s relations with Libya date back to the Second World War when East Africans under the seventh Battalion of King’s African Riffles fought side by side with the allies against Italians in their colony.
In 1970, Libya gave Uganda several scholarships through the late Prince Badru Kakungulu and supreme Mufti Zubair Kayongo. The first beneficiaries were the late former mufti, Sheikh Saad Ibrahim Luwemba, and city tycoon Habib Kagimu.
Libya also supported Amin’s regime against Tanzanian forces and since 1981, it supported Ugandan rebels in the liberation war that was spearheaded by the National Resistance Movement/National Resistance Army under President Yoweri Museveni.