Security Assured – Museveni

By John Kakande PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has said the security situation is under control and that the LRA and ADF have been "very much weakened." Museveni, addressing a press conference in Kampala yesterday, said five ADF rebels responsible for the Kampala city bomb attacks had been arrested and that the rest were known. Another suspect had been arrested over the recent murder of a Makerere University student, he said. Museveni said UPDF had tracked down and killed Kony rebels who murdered the director and 12 students of Jimmy Ssekasi Institute of Catering in the Murchison Falls National Park last week. Scores of ADF rebels who attacked Hamukungu, Kasese, had also been killed. Museveni hailed the new President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Joseph Kabila. He said Kabila seemed serious about implementation of the Lusaka agreement. The President said Uganda would soon pull out two more battalions from the Congo. "The ADF is defeated. These incidents you see are no longer the same threat as you used to know. We know exactly what is remaining in ADF, very few people. Many of their leaders have surrendered. Others have been killed. The ones who have remained, we shall get," Museveni said. "ADF is very much weakened. Even LRA. This Kony is very much weakened. The army is much more active than it has been in the past and is more adequate. But when you are dealing with bandits, you must eliminate the last one before you can get peace. One or two (bandits) can cause a lot of problems," he said. Museveni said the army recently attacked three times Kony rebels believed to have murdered Ssekasi. In the first attack, the army killed four rebels in the Anak area. The army later tracked the rebels in Aswa and killed a large number of them. Museveni said a rebel commander, Odong Opiro, was "either killed or wounded." Museveni said the murder of Ssekasi students was a desperate act by the bandits to try to lure the army from the border. He said, "The army is doing a good job at the border. The army has now woken up," he added. Museveni said the army tracked the rebels that attacked Hamukungu to Congo and killed "quite a number of people." He said nine rebels were captured. He said the group had been hiding in the Virunga Park inside Congo. Museveni said the army had also hit the remnants of the main ADF inside Congo and killed one of their long-time leaders, Murobera. "Kabanda was very close. They killed his escort. We knew he was the escort of Kabanda because we got his radio. We are close to Kabanda, we shall get him," he said. Museveni criticised the press for downplaying the killing of the ADF rebels by the army. "Kazini took there your journalists but of course you put it in the inside page. While the killing of the civilians was on the front page, the killing of the bandits was in the inside page. So I thought I should brief the people of Uganda again," he said. Museveni said the ADF group was responsible for the bomb attacks in Kampala. "We have arrested five of those as I told you. I will not tell you their names," he said. About the Makerere suspect, he said, "I do not want to say his name. They say he is connected to that killer they are looking for." He said he had discovered that there was no security at the university in spite of the fact that there were 36 policemen there. "There is no fence. No security lights and no guards at the hall in spite of the threats," he further said. "There are 36 policemen at Makerere. They have no other job but to provide security. You do not find even a single one of them guarding a hall," he said. Museveni said although Uganda had freed the Sudanese prisoners of war, Sudanese President Bashir had not taken any step to implement the Nairobi agreement. He said the children who were repatriated from Sudan escaped from Kony's camp on their own. "The agreement entailed disbanding Kony and relocating him inside Sudan. That was never done," he further said. Ends