Frank Nyakairu
5 June 2003
Kampala — The government in Kinshasa is blaming the massacres in the DR Congo on Uganda.
The Congolese Information minister Kikaya bin Karubi told The Monitor yesterday that it was Uganda that armed and created the divisions in his country's Ituri region.
"All these warlords in Ituri were created by Uganda. The blame for the massacres squarely lies on Uganda and Rwanda," Mr Karubi said.
The Congolese minister was reacting to allegations that Congolese government soldiers were involved in last weekend's massacre in Tchiomia near the Ugandan border.
Chief Kawa Mandro, the leader of the Hema ethnic group, made the allegation but Mr Karubi has reacted angrily.
"That's totally false. The [Kinshasa] government does not have any troops in that part of the country," Mr Karubi said.
Uganda's Minister of State for Defence Ruth Nankabirwa yesterday denied that Uganda had armed Congolese militia.
"That's not true. We instead stopped arms from coming into the region by capturing four airports," she said.
She said that the arms were being air-dropped by another country in the region.
"The Congolese themselves are responsible for their own deaths," she said.
Uganda's head of the External Security Organisation David Pulkol shifted the blame to the United Nations.
Mr Pulkol was on Tuesday receiving some of the UPDF soldiers at Rwebisengo in the border district of Bundibugyo.
He said that the UN asked the Uganda People's Defence Forces to withdraw from the DR Congo but the world body did "not meet its part of the promise. So the blame squarely goes to the UN."
More than 1,000 Hema have been killed since April by suspected Lendu militia. The first massacre was at Drodro on 3 April when more than 900 people were reportedly killed.
Three hundred others were killed last weekend at Tchiomia, near the Ugandan border.
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