Museveni, Bashir To Meet Short In Khartoum

Jan 03, 2002

BRITISH Secretary of State for International Development Ms. Clare Short is expected to meet presidents Yoweri Museveni and Omar El Bashir of Sudan in Khartoum next week, sources said yesterday.

By Felix Osike and Emmy AllioBRITISH Secretary of State for International Development Ms. Clare Short is expected to meet presidents Yoweri Museveni and Omar El Bashir of Sudan in Khartoum next week, sources said yesterday.Short will be in Sudan for the January 9-11, talks on the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD). The presidents of Kenya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda and Djibouti have confirmed their participation in the meeting.Museveni is leading a 36-member delegation to the talks. He will also be on a three-day state visit. This will be Museveni’s first visit to Sudan since relations between the two countries were severed in 1995.Foreign affairs ministry officials said the meeting will discuss conflict resolution, early warning systems (of drought and famine) and urge members to pay membership dues. Uganda is said to be heavily indebted to IGAD.State minister for foreign affairs in charge of regional cooperation Col. Kahinda Otafiire said the Sudan-Uganda relations, especially Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), will be discussed.He said in a recent meeting, Sudan assured Uganda of its plans to tackle the Kony issue. “They appear to be serious and ready to tackle the issue,” he said. Representatives of other donor countries will also attend the meeting as observers, sources said. The Charge D’Affaires of the Sudanese Embassy in Kampala, Muhammad Sirajuddin, said Museveni will hold bilateral talks with Bashir after the IGAD meeting. He said high on the agenda of the talks “will be the re-location of the LRA and the return of the abducted children.”“The visit is a very positive step. It is something we have been looking forward to. It will enable the presidents to discuss the most important bilateral issues and give resolutions to those issues,” the envoy said.Museveni promised in his new year message that the estimated 460,000 internally displaced people in Acholi, the bedrock of Kony’s rebellion, would go back to their homes this year. He said Kony’s two attempts to enter Uganda were foiled. “We are in contact with Sudan as well as our international allies to ensure that Kony is relocated from southern Sudan as was agreed by Gen. Bashir and myself some years ago in Nairobi under former President Carter’s mediation,” Museveni said.Ends

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