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President Museveni Addresses IGAD

His Excellency Mwai Kibaki The President of the Republic of Kenya, Their Excellencies Heads of State and Government of IGAD, Secretary General of IGAD, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I greet all of you. In particular, I salute H.E. Mwai Kibaki and the people of this country for taking time off to welcome us to our sister Republic of Kenya. Kenya is famous in the world, not only for its dynamic people who waged the anti-colonial Mau Mau war but have made a lot of achievements in the economy, education and sports, but Kenya is also famous for wonderful wildlife in the form of world renown national parks. Your Excellencies and delegations could take time off to view gifts of nature well preserved by our Kenyan brothers and sisters.

In the two years Uganda has been chairing IGAD. The region has experienced big negative and positive events. On the negative side, apart from the conflicts or potential conflicts within and between states, there has been added the phenomena of droughts and consequent famines. Since our region is endowed with a lot of natural resources including reasonable supplies of fresh water, we need and we can work together to insure this area against these vicissitudes-endemic famine, drought). We should use irrigation to stabilize production of food.

We should also have intra-regional trade to ensure the supply of food from food surplus areas to food deficit areas. It is paradoxical that while parts of the Region are being ravaged by drought in Uganda, for instance, we are pouring 80,000 litres of milk every day for lack of markets and 4 million metric tonnes of bananas are rotting every year for the same reason. This is not logical. Our destiny is ·definitely in our hands. We face unfair trade regimes with our partners in Europe, America and Asia inspite of some positive movements in the form of African Grown Opportunities Act (AGOA) by United States of America (USA), Everything but Arms (EBA) by European Union (EU), etc .. Apart from trade barriers in this Region and internationally impeding the exchange of goods and, therefore the transfer of fresh and self-earned financial resources, the continued dependence on exporting or consuming within our region (internally) unprocessed raw materials means that we suffer from diminished earnings for our exports and failure to access distant markets because of not adding value to our natural products.

Uganda is, for example, in a battle to build, through private enterprise, adequate processing capacity to turn our 1.3 billion litres of milk into powder so that we can export to distant markets that are now dominated by products from New Zealand, Australia, Europe, etc .. We are also building, fmally, a capacity to process the 10 million metric tonnes of bananas that contain the richest starch in life that have not been accessing markets because of absence of processing capacity. This region has the capacity to uplift itself from the present miseries.

On the positive side, the region has, in the last two years, witnessed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of Sudan and the formation of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (TFGS). These were great events authored by the efforts of this region initially, supported much later by the friends of IGAD. Let us, therefore, encourage all the parties concerned to implement these agreements. Where possible, cooperation among our countries can provide solutions to some of these problems. The cooperation between the Government of Sudan, the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM)/Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) and Uganda Government on the issue of a terrorist group led by Joseph Kony from the last three years, is a good example. This cooperation has resulted in the great diminishing of this group and led to their uprooting from Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan. Remnants of them have now fled to the Garamba National Park of Congo·­ Kinshasha. This area is under the control of the United Nations and the Kinshasaha government. We should use the same co­ operation to deciminate this group. The Government of Congo should work with the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement, Government of Sudan and Uganda to finish this problem once and for all time. Otherwise, these killers are using Congo now to kill people in Southern Sudan in the areas ofMeridi, Yei, etc.

Lack of co-operation among the states ofthe region turn small problems into I big problems. Uganda and a few other countries were ready to send forces to Somalia to help the Transitional Federal Government to secure itself I and start building a national army. I am sure this problem of building an army is not such an insurmountable problem because we did it in Uganda after the defeat of Idi Amin in 1979, in Rwanda during and after the genocide and currently in Burundi following the peace process there authored by the region. Some of these problems need knowledge. However, in the case of Somalia we were told that the Somalis are so allergic to 'foreigners' including we their brothers that they preferred continued fraicide. I was not sure about this analysis. However, at that time we were in the politics of great historical transition within Uganda, I did not get enough time to follow this issue. The Great Lakes Region used a protection force from South Africa and Ethiopia to guard the interim Government in Burundi. This allowed exiles to come back in order to participate in elections that were successfully held. The Burundi are now busy building their national army. The Region is helping them inspite of constrained resources. I am convinced that the item of building a national army in Somalia is not as insurmountable as it is made out to be.

The Transitional Federal Government of Somalia has now, peacefully, mobilized the militias in Baidoa not to obstruct the location of the government there. Let us give th em the resources they need to feed those militias. The Government of Uganda will make its own contribution to this fund. There has, apparently, been a problem regarding Membership contribution. I was informed a few days ago, that even the Uganda Government is also in arrears, which we have now started clearing. Let us all clear these arrears.

My performance as the Chairman of IGAD has not been very good because of my being busy with the multiparty politics, but hope that his Excellency Mwai Kibaki will compensate for that. Thank You.

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