Uganda Lashes Out at Foreign Strikes in Libya

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE Published: 17 Apr 2011 12:23

RWAKITURA, Uganda - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni lashed out on April 16 at the West's military intervention in Libya and said Africa needed to coordinate its response.

"The Europeans and Americans interfering in Africa is a new phenomenon," Museveni told reporters. "Africa has not had time to sit and react... we may meet in June this year and discuss this issue."

"Africa will work together and probably an extraordinary summit will be called and we will take a position on these Americans and Europeans coming to Africa without the permission of the AU (African Union)," he said.

The AU, which was chaired by embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi until last year and receives significant funding from the north African country, has stressed it was against NATO's air strikes.

It has created a team tasked with brokering a ceasefire, an option the Western-backed Libyan rebels have flatly rejected.

"I hear Americans saying Gadhafi must go. I have had problems with Gadhafi but when it came to foreign intervention in Africa, militarily we cannot entertain it," said Museveni, who is on a five-member AU panel on Libya.

"Can the European troops intervene in Africa? No, that we cannot allow it," Museveni said. "If they want a new Vietnam they will get it. We defeated colonialism in the past and this will be defeated. It has happened but it has to be stopped."

Gadhafi offered support to former dictator Idi Amin when the military strongmen faced a Tanzania-backed coup.

Not long after Amin was ousted in 1979, Gadhafi began supporting the National Resistance Army rebels led by Museveni.

The Museveni - Gadhafi relationship was solid for many years, and the Ugandan capital has both a major road and an opulent mosque named after the embattled Libyan leader.

The relationship has cooled of late however, largely because Museveni has dismissed Gadhafi's United States of Africa project, instead focusing on regional integration like the East African Community.

In a cable published on the WikiLeaks website, Museveni told a former U.S. ambassador to Kampala in 2009 that he feared Kadhafi may try to shoot down his plane while flying over Libyan airspace.

Gadhafi has given financial support to Uganda's tribal monarchies.

The Libyan embassy successfully sued a Kampala tabloid for publishing a series of stories that suggested Gadhafi had an affair with the Queen mother of the western Toro kingdom.

This support has irked Museveni's government, which has a testy relationship with some kingdoms.

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