US embassy concerned about reports on their military

SIR-The US Embassy would like to note that recent news articles about the role of the US military in the Great Lakes region have contained substantially inaccurate and misleading information. In particular we refer to The Sunday Vision front page article of June 17, and The Monitor page three article of Wednesday, June 21. For the record, US government military exchange and training programmes with Uganda, including the IMET and African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) programmes, have been suspended since June 2000 or earlier in some instances, pending progress towards full implementation of the Lusaka peace accords. Furthermore, the US Government does not sell or give weapons to either Uganda or Rwanda, and has not done so since the 1994-1995 UN arms embargo on Rwanda was put in place. Uganda remains eligible to participate in the African Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS) programme. ACSS invites top political and military leaders to seminars that focus on the role of the military within democracies, with an emphasis on civilian control of the military. In the 2000 budget year, the US government funded participation of 6 Ugandan military and parliamentary leaders in ACSS seminars held in Gabon and Botswana. In 2000 the US also facilitated the participation of a number of Ugandan military personnel in joint disaster relief training exercises with Kenyan and Tanzanian troops near Mombasa, Kenya. Total US funding for both programmes was less than $200,000 (sh.352,000,000/-). Mary Jeffers Public Affairs Officer, Embassy of the United States of America