We will surpass UN Millennium Development Goals, Museveni says

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said his country would surpass the 2015 targets of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including reducing poverty to 10 percent in 12 years. "The MDGs are good minimum goals. Uganda will not [only] achieve them, but surpass them," Museveni told a news conference in the capital, Kampala, on Thursday. "Our target is to reduce poverty to 10 percent by 2017." He was referring to the targets set in 2000 by the UN Millennium Summit, when 191 nations undertook to achieve eight goals by 2015 in a bid to eradicate poverty and to reduce global inequality. Museveni said Uganda had reduced its poverty levels from as high as 56 percent eight years ago to 38 percent. However, he said Uganda was still under-performing when it came to maternal mortality rates, which he said were still high because, among other factors, mothers shunned visiting maternity wards manned by men. "That is the one parameter that is not moving as fast," he said. He noted that because the country had done so well, it had moved up the ladder on the UN Human Development Index. "Uganda has moved from the very low category to the middle," he said, promising to lower the maternal mortality rate in tandem with other achievements such as poverty alleviation, the fight against HIV/AIDS and water provision. On the political front, Museveni declined to be drawn into whether or not he would offer himself as a presidential candidate when his ruling National Resistance Movement convened its delegates conference in November. "The Movement is not my property. We have to wait for the delegates' conference, we look at the challenge before we decide who should handle it," he said. Parliament recently passed a constitutional amendment proposing that presidential term limits be lifted, effectively paving the way for Museveni to run for a third term in national elections scheduled for March 2006. Museveni said exiled opposition leader and runner-up in the 2001 presidential elections, Kiiza Besigye, should return to Uganda as the government had no issues with him. "Besigye is the one who ran away due to reasons best known to himself, though there are some stories that he was involved with the PRA [People's Redemption Army, a dormant rebel group]," he said. However, he said if Besigye got involved in activities of the PRA, Kampala would demand that the government of South Africa, where he has sought asylum, extradite him.