Focus on agreement to re-establish full diplomatic ties

Uganda and Sudan agreed on 27 April to re-establish full diplomatic ties, severed in 1995 when each was accusing the other of backing opposition rebel groups, and to exchange ambassadors. Ugandan Foreign Minister James Waphakabulo and visiting Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Isma'il had agreed, during a meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to upgrade diplomatic representation, and to establish a permanent Joint Ministerial Committee to undertake and supervise improving bilateral relations. The Ugandan government also agreed "to expedite and maximise the Ugandan factor in the realisation of a sustainable peace in southern Sudan under the umbrella of IGAD [Inter-Governmental Authority on Development]." Relations between Kampala and Khartoum had been poor since the National Islamic Front (NIF) - since transformed into the National Congress (NC) party - came to power in Sudan in 1988, and antagonism between the two governments peaked in the mid to late 1990s. Five years ago, the Sudanese government - whose Islamist path since 1989 has raised concerns among its neighbours - was effectively marginalised in eastern Africa, and the Ugandan government, which has close links with the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), was among its most militant opponents, according to regional analysts. Sudan has publicly stated that it had provided the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and another Ugandan rebel group, the Allied Democratic Forces with financial and military support, in retaliation for Ugandan support for the SPLM/A, while Uganda has insisted that it only extended moral, as opposed to military, support to the Sudanese rebel movement. However, relations between Sudan and Uganda have improved significantly in recent months, particularly after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni met Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir for the first time in years at a summit in Khartoum in January. Isma'il also met Museveni at State House in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, last week to deliver a verbal message from Bashir. Museveni's participation at that summit meeting of the regional IGAD in Khartoum in January, when he met Bashir face to face - and without aides - became the source of endless speculation in Uganda, according to a political scientist in Makerere University. It was that meeting which reinvigorated the countries' shared will to implement the provisions of the Nairobi reconciliation agreement signed in December 1999, "and to further foster and maintain security across their common border" - thus paving the way for Sudanese acceptance of the Ugandan army crossing the border in pursuit of the LRA, according to a joint Ugandan-Sudanese statement released through the UN Security Council in March. [see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=26548] Now, although no "special relationship" or significant neighbourly friendship is expected between the two countries in the near future, the Khartoum government has stopped supporting the LRA, and overt military assistance from Uganda to the SPLA may have - or has - ceased, despite sustained sympathy for the rebel movement, according to regional analysts. The appointment in July 2000 of Siraj al-Din Hamid, the Sudanese charge d'affaires in Kampala, after he had prepared a report critical of his government’s support for the LRA, was a notable landmark in the course of the improving bilateral relations, according to diplomatic sources in Kampala. However, the LRA issue is also a test of Ugandan-Sudanese relations, and the failure to date of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) to seriously confront - much less defeat - the rebel force in southern Sudan may raise suspicions in Kampala that Khartoum - or, at least, elements of the Khartoum government - has not completely severed its ties with the LRA, analysts say. Improved relations followed a series of meetings and negotiations set in train by the Nairobi reconciliation agreement of December 1999, brokered by former US President Jimmy Carter, albeit that the agreement itself resulted in no immediate breakthrough. The foreign policies of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) in Uganda must be understood in light of its origins and basis of support in the south and west of the country, according to analysts contacted by IRIN. Accordingly, Rwanda was a major interest, and many members of the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), including President Paul Kagame, were active members of the NRM. Similarly, when Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo - DRC), to the west, began to disintegrate, the NRM considered this a threat to Ugandan security and sent in the UPDF. Another major focus of Ugandan foreign policy interest has been its fellow members of the East Africa Community, Kenya and Tanzania, with which Uganda shares a colonial history, important economic ties and outlets to the sea. Uganda developed linkages to the countries to the north, including Sudan, through the Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD), but it was only later, when the organisation reinvented and renamed itself IGAD and assumed a major role in regional security, that Uganda began to take a keener interest, observers told IRIN. An SPLM/A official contacted by IRIN noted that all Ugandan governments - including that of Idi Amin, himself a Muslim - have been sympathetic to the aspirations of the southern Sudanese and wanted to have a buffer zone between an Arab-Islamic dominated northern Sudan and Uganda. Museveni is also Pan-Africanist in the Nyerere mould, and likely continue to empathise with the SPLM/A and its leader, John Garang, who has been a friend from their days together at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, according to a Kampala-based diplomat. Indeed, Museveni was recently heard to wonder whether Khartoum was "an Arab bridge" to Sub-Saharan Africa, or "a bridgehead" - that is, a military entry point. A number of factors are behind the changing relations between the two countries, according to analysts interviewed by IRIN: - First was the failure of Khartoum’s efforts to export political Islam, and its subsequent attempts from the late 1990s to end its isolation by improving relations with its neighbours. - Second was the lack of success of Museveni’s attempts to inflict a military defeat on the LRA, and the growing resentment the insurgency was causing among the Acholi people of northern Uganda (predominantly in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts), who have been the major victims of the LRA's terrorist campaign; pressure was thus mounting to end the security problem in the north. - Third, the recent partial withdrawal of Ugandan forces from the DRC enabled Museveni to devote additional military resources to the problems in the north. - Fourth, and perhaps most significantly, the US's official classification of the LRA as a terrorist organisation (after the 11 September events) inspired Khartoum with enough fear to completely break relations with the Ugandan insurgent group. Current military cooperation between Khartoum and Kampala in the latter’s campaign against the LRA in southern Sudan is a critical indicator of these changes. Despite some concerns on the part of the SPLM/A, the government of Uganda has so far given little indication of a willingness to terminate its relationship with the southern Sudanese rebel movement, according to observers. And a Sudanese diplomat told IRIN that his government did not expect Kampala to do so; rather, he said, Khartoum was urging Uganda to use its influence to pressure the SPLM/A into accepting a comprehensive ceasefire - something to which the rebels are strongly opposed in the absence of a comprehensive political settlement. At present there is little sign of movement, but many SPLM/A officials, who have looked upon Uganda as a bedrock of support, now acknowledge that they have few supporters in the country outside the government. The SPLM/A has frequently presented itself as the front line against expansionist Islam and, while this has some resonance in neighbouring Kenya, it does not have the same impact in Uganda, according to observers. Moreover, the Acholi in northern Uganda are adamantly opposed to the SPLM/A, because they regarded Khartoum’s support for the LRA as a response to Kampala’s backing of the Sudanese rebels. Southern Sudanese note with concern the upgraded diplomatic relations between Sudan and Uganda, the posting of military observers in each other’s countries, and the expectation that flights between Kampala and Khartoum will begin in June. Analysts also say that with the recent high-level US engagement in peace efforts on Sudan - particularly by the special envoy, John Danforth, whose draft report on the situation to President George W. Bush is reportedly circulating already - civil war conditions are very much in flux, and Washington’s close relations with Kampala render the Museveni government highly susceptible to its pressure. US diplomats in the region, like their Sudanese counterparts, are heavily emphasising the need for expansion of the Nuba Mountains ceasefire, which is currently restricted to that area of Southern Kordofan, south-central Sudan. So, while there is no love lost between the Sudanese and Ugandan governments, Khartoum’s wish to reduce Kampala’s opposition, and the latter’s need to end the LRA insurgency may mean the time is right for various modest improvements as they learn to coexist and to make necessary but minor adjustments, according to regional analysts. Thus, diplomatic tension was contained after Uganda became the only African country to vote in favour of the 19 April UN resolution, which expressed concern over human rights abuses in Sudan, by agreement between the two countries on 27 April "to coordinate with each other in the multilateral sphere, and to discuss in advance their respective positions with each other, in case of differences, before taking action". This meant that the two countries had effectively "buried the hatchet" over differences that emerged following Uganda's decision to back a recent UN Human Rights Commission resolution urging Sudan to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, on Monday. "That issue has been completely sorted out. We really have buried the hatchet," Muhammad Ahmad Dirdiery, charge d'affaires at the Sudanese embassy in Kenya, told IRIN. "We shouldn't confuse the Uganda-Sudan bilateral relations with specific issues like human rights," a Ugandan foreign ministry spokesman stated. With Khartoum's recent moderation, the lure of oil imports, and significantly altered international circumstances, notably the current US-Sudanese cooperation in the area of terrorism, countries in the region are all moving cautiously to improve their relations with the Sudanese government, according to political observers. [on Ethiopia-Sudan relations, see http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27484] Yet, none of these countries was laying aside fears about the long-term objectives of the ruling Islamist NC in Sudan, which still included the export of political Islam, the observers stated. So while Ugandan and Sudanese national interests, as well as regional patterns and the post-11 September global political environment, have combined to facilitate enhanced diplomatic relations, it is not likely to be all plain sailing between Khartoum and Kampala. Rather, a long history of antagonism, the unpredictability and volatility of politics in the Horn of Africa, the limited willingness of either Khartoum or Kampala to make more than minor compromises and doubts about the outcome of the present Ugandan army assault on the LRA is likely to keep the Joint Ministerial Committee on bilateral relations fully occupied, observers added.