UN experts malicious amateurs - Mbabazi

October 23, 2012
H.E. Ban Ki-Moon
United Nations Secretary General
NEW YORK

Your Excellency,

REPORT OF THE UNITED NATIONS GROUP OF EXPERTS AND THE SECURITY COUNCIL PRESIDENTIAL STATEMENT ON THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DRC)

The Government of the Republic of Uganda is totally disappointed at the manner in which the United Nations system has treated her contribution to conflict resolution, peacekeeping and peace building in the region. The disappointment arises from the accusations levelled against Uganda in the latest report of the UN Group of Experts on the DRC and the apparent endorsement of its findings and recommendations by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as expressed in the Presidential Statement adopted by the UNSC on October 19, 2012 on the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the report, Uganda is accused of having provided support to M-23 in the form of direct troop reinforcement in DRC territory, weapon deliveries, technical assistance, joint planning, political advice and facilitation of external relations.

They also claim that units of the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF) and the Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF) jointly supported M23 in a series of attacks in July, 2012 to take over the major towns of Rutshuru territory and the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo Forces (FARDC) base of Rumangabo and that both governments have also co-operated to support the creation of expansion of M23’s political branch and have consistently advocated on behalf of the rebels. That further, the sanctioned individuals continue to reside in or regularly travel to Uganda.

Prior to the Group of Experts’ visit to Uganda, they indicated that they would be in Uganda for one day and indicated areas where they needed relevant information and, indeed, government officials provided them the response to the questions they raised.

The Experts arrived on September 17, 2012 and departed on September 18, 2012. They held a meeting with government officials on September 18, 2012. At the end of the meeting, they requested to meet with Chiefs of Intelligence but it was not possible to arrange a meeting at such short notice because the Chiefs were engaged with other scheduled duties. The government of Uganda asked the team to extend their stay in order for them to hold the requested meeting but they were unable to do so.

The government of Uganda is, therefore, surprised that issues which were neither notified to Uganda prior to the visit nor discussed in the meeting of 18th September 2012 are the subject of the report. Uganda categorically denies the allegations against her because they are totally false.

For example, how could it be possible as is alleged in the report; that UPDF were inside DRC attacking the FARDC and at the same time a battalion of more than 600 FARDC soldiers ran into Uganda for safety on July 7, 2012? They were received, the wounded ones were treated and, later on all of them were transported and handed over to the DRC government at an agreed location in the presence of UN officials. Logically, the FARDC soldiers would not have fled to Uganda if Uganda had been fighting them alongside M23 at the border. Curiously, the Group of Experts doesn’t even mention this significant event.

You recall that at the height of the conflict in Eastern DRC, you personally contacted H.E. Yoweri K. Museveni, the President of the Republic of Uganda and requested him to intervene and stop the fighting in eastern DRC. About the same time, H.E. Joseph Kabila, President of [the] DRC, contacted President Museveni and explicitly requested him to intervene and facilitate dialogue between M23 and DRC Government.

In accordance with article 23(2) of the Pact on Security, Stability and Development in the Great Lakes Region, President Museveni convened four extra-ordinary summits of the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) on the security situation in eastern DRC, three of which were hosted in Kampala using Uganda’s own resources.

During the summit of September 8, 2012, President Museveni was specifically mandated by the ICGLR Heads of State and Governments, as the chair, to facilitate dialogue between M23 and DRC government and to coordinate regional efforts to find a durable solution to the security situation in Eastern DRC.

This regional initiative was approved by the African Union Peace and Security Council on September19, 2012. At the last two of the Summits, the UN Secretary General was represented by the Special Representative, Ambassador Abu Moussa, as well as Special Representative for MONUSCO, Ambassador Roger Meece at which your messages of support were highly appreciated. On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on September 27, 2012 in New York, you convened a High Level Mini-Summit on DRC and pledged full support to the regional efforts. The international community then also expressed strong support for ICGLR regional efforts.

During the same period, Mr Hervé Ladsous, the (UN) Under-secretary for Peacekeeping Operations, visited Uganda and pledged UN’s total support to the regional efforts spearheaded by Uganda.

In this whole situation, two aspects are not acceptable:
1. The maligning of Uganda that it supports the M23 group and that our troops have secretly taken part in fighting the brother Congolese Army, including taking part, along with the Rwanda troops, in the capturing of the town of Rutshuru. Yet, all serious actors should know, from the past experiences, that we say what we mean and mean what we say. Which troops of Uganda took part in those operations? Where is the evidence? Is it acceptable that an organ of the UN should falsely and carelessly accuse a member of the UN in this way using either amateurs or malicious actors dressed up as “experts”?

As already stated above, our recent involvement in the issues of DRC was at your express request and that of President Kabila when you both, [but] separately, rang President Museveni in July 2012, requesting him to intervene when the M23 rebels were threatening to attack Goma.

It was after those requests that President Museveni started looking for those rebels because we did not even know the individuals involved prior to the requests from you and President Kabila. It was not easy to convince M23 rebels to suspend operations. However, President Museveni was able to show them that political solutions are generally better than military solutions, where those political solutions are possible.

That is how the delegation of M23 was invited to come to Uganda on July 29, 2012. They were even not allowed through the official border entry points by the border officials who did not know about the peace efforts.

They had to infiltrate through the bush because they know those areas and the peoples are the same. Since that time, Uganda has hosted three summits on the situation in Congo i.e. on August 7-8, September 7-8 and October 7-8, 2012, using our own money.

In the September 2012 extra-ordinary Summit, Uganda was requested to use the mode of indirect talks between the DRC government and the M23 rebels. This is because President Museveni threatened to expel the delegation of M23 if the DRC government did not want to have dialogue with the group they had told Uganda to invite in the first place. Since that time, indirect dialogue has been going on between the DRC government and the M23 rebels.

When the UN decided to send MONUC to DRC in 2000/01, Uganda offered Entebbe Airport free of charge for that operation - if only they (the UN) could restore peace to the brotherly people of DRC who share with us a common ancestry and heritage as do all the other neighbouring countries.

Up to now the UN does not pay a single coin for using the facility at the Entebbe Airport. Unfortunately, the UN has not pacified eastern DRC as we had hoped. Eastern DRC is still a permanent base for genocidal forces from Rwanda and terrorist groups from Uganda such as the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the so-called Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). Is falsely accusing Uganda the reward for these efforts? This we cannot accept. If these are “experts” as they are held to be, why did they not put their questions to competent people in Uganda to answer them? We demand to see that evidence of complicity in supporting the M23 which some people claim to have.

2. The UN Security Council (UNSC) adopted a Presidential Statement on October 19, 2012 which, among other things, stated as follows:

In paragraph 3:

“...The Security Council expresses its intention to apply targeted sanctions against the leadership of the M23 and those acting in violation of the sanctions regime and the arms embargo and calls on all Member States to submit, as a matter of urgency, listing proposals to the 1533 committee”.

In paragraph 11:
“... The Security Council expresses its full support to the United Nations Group of Experts of the 1533 committee and calls for enhanced cooperation between all States, particularly those in the region, and the Group of Experts, encourages further that all parties and all States ensure cooperation with the Group of Experts by individuals and entities within their jurisdiction or under their control and reiterates its demand that all parties and all States ensure the safety of its members, and unhindered and immediate access, in particular to persons, documents and sites the Group of Experts deems relevant to the execution of its mandate …”

In view of this, what becomes of our mediation role for which we were, initially, requested by President Kabila and yourself? Why did the UNSC not seek the views of the International conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) through its current chairman, President Museveni?

If these African Regional bodies are to be given a fait accompli by the UN, why should they exist? Where the UN works with the region, we get good results e.g. the struggle for the independence of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia; the democratisation of South Africa, Burundi, Somalia, Sudan; etc.

Where the Region is ignored, failure is almost certain e.g. the American actions in Somalia; the endless Western involvement in the Congo from 1960 to date; the recent actions of the West in Libya, disregarding the proposals of the African Union (AU) etc.

The patriots of Uganda are Pan-Africans by conviction.
We do not seek to carry favour with any extra-African actors. Whatever little contribution we have made - in Southern Africa, in Sudan, in Rwanda, in Burundi, in Congo, in Somalia or fighting the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Central African Republic (CAR), etc. - is out of Pan-African conviction, in the tradition of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, [First Angolan President António] Agostinho Neto and others.

Since, however, there are actors in the UN system who are not able to understand that there can be principled actors in Africa and who think that all actors are looking for gold and other minerals like the imperialists who invaded Africa were doing, we have now decided, after due consultations with our African brothers in the AU and ICGLR, to completely withdraw from these regional peace efforts i.e. in DRC, Somalia, etc.

There are only two factors that can persuade us to change this regrettable but unavoidable course of action on our part, given the malevolent and myopic actors in some of the international institutions:

• The UN must sort out the malignments (sic) against Uganda by bringing out the truth about Uganda’s role in the current Regional efforts.
•Our African brothers in the ICGLR, through the Expanded joint Verification Mechanism (EJVM), a group of real military experts as opposed to the amateurs from New York masquerading as “experts”, should quickly pronounce themselves on these malignments (sic) as Uganda.

It is worth noting, though, that our work was progressing well. At the last ICGLR Summit, it was decided not to hold more Summits and President Museveni was only waiting for the recommendations of the Committee of Ministers of Defence on the way forward and had, indeed, started the process of raising funds for the 4,000 troops of the Neutral International Force (NIF).

However, given these malignments (sic) against Uganda, a country that is now in the chair of ICGLR, another Summit may have to be convened to receive the Report of the Committee of the Ministers of Defence in respect of these malignments (sic).
If our African bothers in the ICGLR stand with us, it will put the Region in the position it was in, in respect of Burundi, where the Region had to impose its own sanctions against the Tutsi faction, which the UN completely refused to endorse because some of the international parasitic forces were in cahoots with the faction, its crimes against the Barundi people ever since 1965 notwithstanding.
In the end, the Region proved right and the UN, eventually, joined us. We had to reject endless lies by some Western actors who used to claim that Tanzania was backing the Hutu rebels and that the late Mwalimu Nyerere was pro-Hutu and anti-Tutsi.

In order for Uganda to continue contributing to Regional efforts, we need understanding, respect and fairness from the UN or the Region itself or both. We cannot continue otherwise. Some friends say; “Ignore that Report; continue contributing; we know that it is not true, etc”.

This is not good enough. What do we tell the people of Uganda? Why should we continue involving Uganda where the only reward we get is malignment (sic)? Why should the children of the Ugandans die and we get malignment (sic) as a reward?
Why should we invite retaliation by the Al-shabaab terrorists by standing with the people of Somalia, only to get malignment (sic) by the UN system? Al-shabaab killed 76 Ugandans on the July 11, 2010 on account of our spearheading the Somalia operation.

Your excellency, we would only want to remind the UN about the rights of the people of Uganda which are the reason we have been keenly spearheading the regional efforts to find a lasting solution to the insecurity in the eastern DRC.
It is not in order for DRC, in partnership with MONUSCO, to maintain terrorists against Uganda by allowing ADF to freely use DRC territory to train, to receive arms and to launch assassination attacks on Ugandans. Recently, three Moslem Sheikhs were assassinated in Uganda – our suspicion is on ADF based in eastern DRC.

What is the UN going to do about this? Our view was to use dialogue to help Congo to resolve the issue of the M23 which is a recent complication in the endless DRC situation and, then, using the Neutral International Force and MONUSCO, get rid of terrorists from the DRC territory. Some of the actors seem to have a different opinion. How long will the Congolese territory continue to be used as a base against neighbours?

In light of the above, withdrawing from Somalia, CAR, etc., becomes inevitable so that we keep watch on the DRC territory donated to the terrorists by the DRC government and the United Nations.
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Please accept, Your Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration.

President of the Republic of Uganda
President of the United Nations Security Council
President of the UN General Assembly
Vice-President of the Republic of Uganda
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs holding the Portfolio of the
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Attorney General, Republic of Uganda
Minister of Defence, Republic of Uganda