Qadhafi and Bashir discuss Uganda

Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi visited the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Thursday on the first stop of a mission to discuss Sudanese-Ugandan relations, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Al-Qadhafi and Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir were to discuss “the role that Libya can play in normalising relations between Sudan and Uganda”, it said. The Libyan leader travelled on to Uganda on Friday for talks with President Yoweri Museveni, according to news reports.

Sudan and Uganda severed diplomatic relations in 1994 over accusations that each country was helping the other’s rebel movements. Last year, they signed an agreement - not yet implemented - under which Khartoum agreed to disarm the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), based in southern Sudan, and both countries agreed to restore diplomatic relations, and deploy Libyan and Egyptian observers to monitor their common border.

While in Sudan, Al-Qadhafi was scheduled to hold talks with Al-Bashir on a Libyan-Egyptian plan to end the 18-year civil war in Sudan. Also this week, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo sent special presidential envoy Ibrahim Babangida to Khartoum as part of his efforts to try to end the war. “Nigeria is now undertaking a peace initiative, and my visit is part of the consultations between the two countries,” Babangida, a former Nigerian president, was quoted as saying. Obasanjo was last week reported to have met John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, leader of the opposition Ummah Party.