Kampala deploys troops along border with Congo

The Ugandan army announced on Wednesday it had deployed troops along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) following reports of renewed activity by Ugandan insurgent groups based in eastern Congo. "We have made [a] precautionary deployment," Maj Shaban Bantariza, the army spokesman, told IRIN on Wednesday, "especially in areas we think are possible crossing points for some negative elements." He added, "They are not a great threat, but we are following them and picking up some of them." He was speaking in reference to the capture combatants of two Ugandan rebel groups. Bantariza said: "They [the rebels] have taken advantage of the non-existence of the state in much of eastern DRC to move around." However, he added: "We have not got any information that they have bases there and that they are in any military formation that points to an attack." The Ugandan government says a new rebel group, the People's Redemption Army (PRA), along with the moribund Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), until now an armed Islamic group in western Uganda, were reorganising in the DRC for a possible attack. Last week, the Ugandan army paraded captives it said were operatives of the PRA, who were arrested earlier in the week in northwestern Uganda carrying guns. Bantariza said three more men were arrested on Tuesday with piles of blankets, cups and other items. Last week's arrests resulted in Uganda expelling a junior official of the Rwandan embassy after those arrested claimed that he was their main contact. Rwanda retaliated by expelling a Ugandan diplomat, triggering renewed tension between the two countries. An official in the Ugandan security services said Kampala believed that PRA commander Edison Muzora had fled bases in the DRC to another country. However, Bantariza said there was a marked improvement in the Kinshasa government's hold on the territory in eastern DRC and that this had given Ugandan rebels little time to settle, leading to their constant mobility. "They have also tried to take advantage of the political atmosphere in Uganda to reorganise, so as to send the signal that if [the] politics does not change, these things would escalate," Bantariza said. He added that the political debate over changes in Uganda's constitution, to allow President Yoweri Museveni a third term, were also at play in the current tension at the border. Uganda and Rwanda had deployed thousands of troops to eastern Congo in the past, ostensibly to destroy their respective rebels. However, they ended up fighting alongside different Congolese rebel groups seeking to remove the government in Kinshasa. Amidst Rwandan threats that it would return its troops to DRC to strike at Rwandan rebels, Ugandan Defence Minister Amama Mbabazi urged Kigali on Tuesday to look at existing channels to review security issues with its neighbours before taking military action. "Only recently, we signed in the United States a tripartite mechanism that could be used to handle the issues that may arise between Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC, and this arrangement involved the United Nations - and Burundi was also invited," Mbabazi said.