Minister accuses Uganda of backtracking on DRC pullout

Zimbabwe’s Defence Minister Moven Mahachi said on Thursday that Uganda’s announcement that it would pull-out all its troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) may be a ploy to unravel the peace process, PANA reported. He was quoted as saying that Zimbabwe was “worried” by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s threats to abandon the peace process, which accompanied the troop pull-out announcement last week. “While it is proper for Uganda to pull out from the DRC, it is proper for them to do so under the Lusaka peace agreements,” he said. He added that Zimbabwe took Uganda’s announcement to pull out its troops from the DRC with suspicion because of past cases of “deceit” by Kampala and Rwanda, which both back rebel factions in the DRC. “They (Rwanda and Uganda) have been looting from the DRC to sustain their economies. The Ugandans have taken everything they could, including livestock belonging to peasants,” he claimed. Mahachi, however, said that Zimbabwe would continue scaling down its estimated 12,000 troops in Congo as part of the Lusaka peace process, together with its allies Angola and Namibia.