Presidents Museveni, Kagame agree to lessen tension

Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda vowed on Tuesday to set up mechanisms to improve their relations by ensuring that dissident groups do not destablise each other's governments, news organisations reported.

Both men met for talks in London, convened by the British government, to try to cool the growing tension between the once tightly knit allies. Recently, tension has been particularly heightened along their common border from where Uganda has just withdrawn a battalion of troops. Rwanda had feared an invasion by Uganda that, in turn, accused Kigali of harbouring Ugandan dissidents.

After the six-hour summit, described in a joint statement as "good, fruitful and frank", both men affirmed their country's desire to re-establish good relations.

"I don't believe in preserving problems, I believe in preserving peace," Museveni said in a BBC report broadcast on Wednesday.

"I am disappointed that we have had a problem with Uganda," Kagame said in the same broadcast. "Why should we have problems at all?"

Museveni told the BBC that a joint commission would review the reasons for the underlying tensions. The commission, which Museveni said would begin its work in a week, will also investigate complaints of dissident activity in both countries and recommend corrective measures.

Uganda backed Kagame, a former senior Ugandan army officer, when his Rwandan Patriotic Forces invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990. In 1996, Kampala supported Kagame when Kigali backed the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire in its drive into eastern DRC (then Zaire) against the mostly Hutu former Rwandan army (ex-FAR) and their allied Hutu Interahamwe militias, accused of the genocide. Kagame's support for the alliance forces culminated in a full-scale offensive that overthrew the Zairean leader, Mobutu Sese Seko.

The alliance eventually split, with Rwanda and Uganda supporting different factions. Eventually, Ugandan and Rwandan troops still backing the rival groups clashed in the northeastern DRC town of Kisangani in 1999. The rival groups, sometimes described as Rwandan and Ugandan proxies now fighting the DRC government, recently announced they would join forces, and also hunt down Rwandan and Ugandan dissidents in DRC that Kampala and Kigali say drew them into the DRC in the first place.