Lt Col Lutaya Fought For Kabila

By Anne Mugisa and Milton Olupot Lt. Col. Andrew Lutaaya became the first UPDF officer yesterday to admit involvement in the war to oust former Zaire president, the late Mobutu Ssese Seko. Lutaaya, 46, a pilot, said he was asked by Rwanda President Paul Kagame, and then rebel leader Laurent Kabila to transport and organise their troops in 1997. He said he never saw any UPDF troops during the Kabila-Mobutu war. He said Kagame with whom he served in the then National Resistance Army (NRA) requested him to deploy the anti-Mobutu forces rapidly. “I worked with Kagame and others when he was an officer of the NRA in Uganda. They were aware of my capability in that area upon the water and also in the air,” he said. He said that was his only involvement in the Congo and could not testify on the UPDF presence there. Earlier, another soldier, Lt. Col. Joseph Arocha who was a UPDF sector commander in Bunya, DR Congo from November 1999, denied instigating the Hema/Lendu tribal clashes. A UN panel report accused him, Brig. James Kazini, Col. Peter Kerim and Captain Anthony Kyakabale of training the Hema/Lendu militia and manipulating them to fight each other. Arocha, who was in the Congo for six months until May 2000, said he did not even know that there were militias in the two tribes. He said the clashes between the tribes were over land and had been there since the 1950s, long before the UPDF went there. He said when he was sent there, his priority was to cut off the supply route for the rebels attacking Uganda. He said he replaced Kyakabale in the Congo and did not know what he (Kyakabale) did there. In another development, a Congolese businessman accused a Thai businessman of defrauding him of minerals valued at US $10,000 (sh18m)before fleeing to Uganda. Songa Musene from Butembo, DR Congo, said he deals in cassiterate, a mineral. He said John Supit Cotiram, who co-owns Dara Forest with a Pross Balaba, took US$20,000 worth of cassiterate, paid only US$10,000 before disappearing. Dara Forest was cited by the panel as one of the major actors in the plunder of the DR Congo. Supit and Balaba, however, denied the plunder before the commission. Musene, with his partner, a Uganda Farouk Kigozi Makubuya, testified separately yesterday. Makubuya, who later became Musene’s translator, said he first exported fish from Uganda to Congo but switched to minerals when fish sales were banned. Makubuya also said he owns Tin concessions within Uganda and that Congolese, Kalisa Nkumbera and Musene were his associates. Makubuya and Musene said their cassiterate business was legal. Ends