The US has reportedly inked a deal with Uganda to sell weapons to the Somali government in order to counter the soaring insurgency.
According to a report published in the Kampala-based Daily Monitor newspaper, Ugandan troops will secretly supply weapons to Somali forces and then forward the bill to Washington.
“When the Ugandans provide those weapons, they give us a bill and an accounting for what they have turned over to [Somali government] and we then give them the money to replace the stores and the arms,” the paper quoted a top US State Department official as saying on condition of anonymity.
The US official went on to add, “The supplied weapons are small arms and limited munitions … not artillery pieces, armored vehicles or tanks. These are weapons that would be used in an urban environment, fighting a counter-guerilla insurgency.”
The paper also claimed that Ugandan forces had been paid million of dollars to arm and train Somali government forces.
The report comes as Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni hosted his Somali counterpart Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in Kampala to discuss what the White House termed as “bilateral issues concerning the two countries”.
Meanwhile, Press TV’s correspondent in Somalia reported that a ship carrying some 27 tons of guns and munitions docked a short while ago at the main port of the capital, Mogadishu.
Now with the arms-for-cash revelation, Ugandan forces have violated the neutral terms of their African Union peacekeeping mandate by arming one of the warring parties in the war-wreaked Horn of Africa state.
Somalia has been marred by conflict since the fall of the Siad Barre government in 1991.
Armed militant groups — including al-Shabaab fighters and Hizb al-Islamiya — have recently vowed to target the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), escalating the situation in the volatile country.
Source: Radio RBC
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