Ministerial meeting planned for the weekend

The Ugandan and Rwandan defence ministers are to meet at the weekend in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, as a follow-up of the ongoing peace process aimed at resolving the differences between the two countries, diplomats and government officials have confirmed. Tom Phillips, the British high commissioner to Uganda, confirmed to IRIN on Friday that the meeting between the two ministers, Amama Mbabazi of Uganda and Col Emmanuel Habyarimana of Rwanda, would be held in the presence of the British high commissioners to Uganda and Rwanda and their respective defence attaches. "It is a follow-up of the November and October meetings, and the British will be there as third party," Phillips said. He gave no details. A senior government official in Kigali confirmed to IRIN that the Ugandan delegation led by Mbabazi was expected there on Sunday. The differences between Uganda and Rwanda, once very close allies, became evident in August 1999, March 2000 and May 2000 when the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) and the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) clashed on separate occasions in Kisangani in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although there are no clear causes for the fighting, tension between leaders of both countries continued to build up, nearly culminating in a full-scale war, with massive troop build-ups on their common borders by the end of last year. To try and ease the tension, a first meeting between Mbabazi and Habyarimana took place on 29 October 2001 in Kabale, southwestern Uganda. A crisis meeting then followed between President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni, in London on 6 November 2001. The London meeting took place after Museveni had written a letter, on 28 August 2001, asking British Minister for International Development Clare Short to agree to his intention to increase defence expenditure - from US $113 million to US $139 million - to beyond the 1.9 percent of the Gross Domestic Product agreed with donors. In the letter, Museveni told Short that Uganda had a genuine security threat posed by Rwanda, which, he said, had an army of 100,000 compared to Uganda's 40,000. In an effort to end accusations by each country that the other was trying to undermine it by training its rebels, a bilateral memorandum of understanding was signed by Ugandan and Rwandan defence ministers in November 2001 mandating a joint military verification committee. Maj James Mugira of the UPDF and Col Charles Kayonga of the RPA head the joint verification committee. The verification exercise involves third party participation. The Kigali meeting is expected to review progress of the verification exercise and to make recommendations to the heads of state. Both countries have already exchanged lists of their dissidents, sources said.