Uganda protests UN Lake Albert raid
By Alfred Wasike
UGANDA is to send an official protest note to MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for seizing a Heritage Oil exploration vessel on Lake Albert on Monday. “We have protested in the strongest terms to MONUC because of their provocative conduct. The seizure and commandeering of the boat, and the interrogation of the oil exploration staff, need to be explained,” minister for regional cooperation Isaac Musumba told The New Vision yesterday. “This happened hardly two weeks after president Museveni and Kabila signed an agreement to normalise security on our common border. MONUC is supposed to be a peacekeeping force but it has turned out to be a peace-disrupting one.” Musumba pointed out that under its mandate, MONUC should be fighting the negative forces, including Ugandan rebel groups operating from Congo. “Instead, they are cohabiting with the negative forces and contributing to heightening the tension in the region,” the minister said. MONUC, however, says the oil vessel had strayed into the Congolese side of Lake Albert. Speaking via telephone from Kinshasa, spokesperson Michel Bonnardeaux said: “Our forces received military intelligence that the Heritage boat had strayed into Congolese waters. So we took it away to a base at Kasenyi. In the boat were four Ugandans and one Kenyan. We interviewed and fed them, and escorted them after an hour or so back to the border.” He explained that UN soldiers were carrying out routine patrols on the lake to check on boats carrying illicit weapons or drugs. On the incident which followed, in which a Ugandan rescue team clashed with a Congolese boat, Bonnardeaux said he had information that two Congo soldiers and six civilians were killed. “The Congolese army has told us that the UPDF stopped the boat and shot the passengers, who included a child, two women, three men and two soldiers.” However, the Ugandan army has dismissed these allegations. “We received information from Col. Abdalla Nyombi, the second in command of the Congolese army in the Ituri region, that one soldier and one civilian were killed in the shoot-out,” said UPDF spokesman Maj. Felix Kulayigye. “MONUC is trying to cover up for their misdeeds. They had no reason to commandeer a boat from inside Uganda’s waters. The UPDF boat, which went to rescue the Heritage vessel, was shot at first before it returned fire.” He added: “If it was a civilian boat, why was the army firing from it? And if it was a military boat, why were civilians aboard?” One UPDF soldier was injured in the fire-fight.
