Uganda, Ethiopia deny their troops arming Somali rebels

Ugandan military personnel participate in a joint military
training exercise with French troops at Singo military
school, Nakaseke district, western Uganda.

25 May, 2008

KAMPALA (AFP) - Uganda and Ethiopia denied Saturday that their troops in Somalia were selling arms to local insurgents fighting government and Ethiopian troops in the shattered north-east African country.

United Nations monitors this week accused Ugandan officers in the African Union peacekeeping force -- which also groups Ethiopian and Somali commanders -- of selling arms to Islamist rebels in violation of a 1992 arms embargo.

"That cannot be true. We cannot give arms to people who shoot at us," Ugandan army spokesman Captain Paddy Ankunda told AFP.

"It is absolutely ridiculous, I think these are spoilers who are trying to spoil the Africa(n) Union machine, but we hope the UN will investigate this report and bring out the truth," he added.

The Ethiopian foreign ministry flatly denied the accusations and instead said its troops, deployed late 2006 to bolster the feeble Somali government, had helped curb arms theft.

"The claims that Ethiopian troops are supplying Shabab (Islamist insurgents) have no plausibility," the ministry said in a statement released in Addis Ababa.

"Ethiopian troops have in fact played a major role in preventing the theft of arms and ammunition in recent months.

"It is entirely fanciful to suggest Ethiopia is funneling arms and ammunition to Shabab, or indeed that Shabab would accept arms from such a tainted source. Nor is the evidence offered by the report hardly convincing."

Two Islamist insurgents armed with AK-47s hide behind
a building wall in Fagah neighborhood, north of
Mogadishu

But Addis Ababa said it would probe claims that have dogged the Horn of Africa nation since 2005.

The report was sent to the UN Security Council on Thursday by a panel charged with reviewing the 1992 arms embargo slapped on Somalia after it descended into anarchy following the ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre.

Experts said in the report that arms on sale originate from army stocks or are seized following battles with Islamist insurgents.

Since Barre's ouster, several well-armed clan-based factions have been in an almost constant state of low-level war, hindering effective monitoring of the embargo.

The UN Security Council has rejected several pleas by transitional Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed to ease the arms ban, warning that such a move would exacerbate fighting in the lawless nation.

The world body's monitors accused neighbouring Ethiopia, Yemen and Eritrea of violating the embargo by repeatedly sending weapons shipments to increasingly hostile factions within Somalia.

Somalia's breakaway northern regions of Puntland and Somaliland are other entry points for weapons.

The AU mission in Somalia known as AMISOM has over 2,500 Ugandan and Burundian troops, well short of the 8,000 pledged by the pan-African body.