Col Yeey's heartbreak: Ugandan troop deployment 'uncertain'

[wind.talker]

Uganda halts troop deployment in Somalia

 

KAMPALA, May 3 (Xinhuanet) -- The Ugandan government has suspended the deployment of its troops, Uganda People' Defense Force (UPDF), in the war-torn Somalia.

 

State owned newspaper, The New Vision, reported on Tuesday quoting Minister of State for International Affairs Okello Oryem as saying that the Somali warlords are opposed to deployment of Ugandan troops, adding that the situation is still being studied.

 

"The deployment of Ugandan and Sudanese soldiers was to preparethe ground for the Somali president to return home. But now the situation is tricky," a senior security official was quoted as saying.

 

The UPDF spokesman on the Somali mission, Paddy Ankunda, told Xinhua by telephone on Tuesday that the peacekeeping force to be deployed to Somalia is finalizing its training but was not sure ofwhen they will leave.

Local reports said that Yoweri Museveni, the chairman of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), also the president of Uganda, would this week meet a delegation of Somali warlords over the deployment of Ugandan troops.

 

The African Union authorized IGAD countries: Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti to send an peacekeeping force to Mogadishu to help Somalia's transitional government now in Nairobi, Kenya relocate to Somalia.

 

The peacekeeping troops were supposed to start their mission in Somalia starting April 30 and thereafter will be replaced by an AU peacekeeping force after nine months.

 

Somalia has been without a central government since 1991, when clan-based warlords overthrew Mohamed Siad Barre and then involved in a domestic conflict.

 

The transitional government was formed in 2004 in Kenya, under the auspices of the regional bloc IGAD and the European Union. It has not been able to return to Mogadishu because of security fears.Enditem

 

 

Source: Xinhuanet, May 03, 2005

[contraflow]

ouch...that must have really hurt!

 

 

Knew all this was to good to be true, next thing you know even Sudan will back out.Then I will mostly definitely know that this gov will end like the ones before it. :rolleyes:

[Young Jeezy]

I guess somalis chose anarchy over a government, although alledgedly a corrupt one.