Badru D. Mulumba
6 October 2001
President Yoweri Museveni has in a strong criticism described Europe and the United States as arrogant, saying that they are to blame for the wave of terrorist attacks that swept the US on Sept. 11.
Speaking during the official opening of the 9th Uganda International Trade Fair yesterday, Museveni described Saudi dissident, Osama bin Laden, who is widely believed to be behind the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Centre and part of the Pentagon, as a "small problem", which will soon "be finished".
"Bin Laden was created by the arrogance of the western countries. They think they know everything. [Terrorists] are a result of the West. They (the West) have ignored we, small people," Museveni said while addressing guests at Lugogo, many of them diplomats, including US Ambassador Martin Brennan.
"The problem was that America and Europe had kugoona (Lunyankole for 'become sleepy') because they are not advisable. You know people who have been on the moon!" Museveni said, adding that he has been warning "these people (the West) about how we have been suffering" with these terrorists.
He said that terrorists have been abducting children, "cutting their lips, cutting their noses and taking them to Sudan" and Uganda has "been crying but has been ignored".
"Bin Laden has woken up these people. The people who have been terrorizing us have now woken up the big guys," Museveni said, adding that the US ought to consult him on fighting terrorism.
"This man of the American Reserve Bank, he does not know anything. He should consult me on this [fighting terrorism]," he added.
The United States has frozen assets and bank accounts belonging to suspected terrorists and organisations linked to bin Laden. Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (the US central bank) cut interest rates to boost spending after shaken consumers seemed to recoil after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Museveni predicted that the terrorist threat would be over once bin Laden is caught. "It is not a big problem. Once you capture bin Laden, then the other terrorists would give up. Once bin Laden is grabbed, all the terrorists would stop; that would be a lesson to all," he said.
Museveni said yesterday that the arrogance that has made the West ignore advice on bin Laden is the reason why the proposed AES Nile Power Bujagali hydropower project is being derailed.
"Now, the war (derailing the project) is in New York," he said. "There are confused groups there. They are so confused, they have nothing to do, so they create artificial problems."
He added: "So I am going to write a letter in one of the international magazines and blast those people. I am going to send them a rocketThese are people who know nothing about the environment. I am tired of these people who are ignorant."
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