Uganda warns troop withdrawal if Somalia's govt tenure is not extended for a year

Abdi Hajji Hussein
Kampala, Uganda
June 3, 2011

The Ugandan president on Thursday warned his troops will be withdrawn from the horn of African nation if Somalia’s current government tenure is not extended for 12 months. Yuweri Museveni made the statement while addressing at the International Contact group on Somalia meeting in the Ugandan capital of Kampala.

Talking about holding parliamentary and presidential elections which the United Nations pushes, Museveni spelled out such steps may allow the extremists to re-organize and cause problems, and also undermine the battlefield gains the AMISOM forces and Somali army have made so far.

“If the current system collapses, or if it is seriously undermined, we can have no justification to stay in that situation—we will leave Somalia,” Museveni said at the conference.

Augustine Mahiga, the U.N. special representative to Somalia, reiterated it is needed elections to be held in war-decimated Somalia. Mahiga accused the transitional government of not living up to its mandated issues in the last two years.

Yet, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the president of Somalia's fragile U.N.-backed government agreed with the Ugandan leader calls, saying the country is at war against al Qaeda linked militants and that the current government should crate an environment conducive to hold election.

African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which is made up by 9,000 troops mainly from Uganda and Burundi, arrived in Somalia early in 2007 to protect the internationally backed transitional federal government that controls only small parts of the capital Mogadishu.

Source: All Headline News (AHN).
Link: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/90050423?Uganda%20warns%20troop%20withdrawal%20if%20Somalia%26%23146%3Bs%20govt%20tenure%20is%20not%20extended%20for%20a%20year.