The UPDF has denied claims by the Kinshasa government that
Uganda sent 2000 AIDS infected soldiers on a deliberate mission to spread
the disease in eastern Congo.
Congo Human Rights Minister Leonard Okitundu Friday made the charge before envoys in Kinshasa and also denounced a report by a United Nations investigator on alleged rights abuses by Congo in the conduct of the war. "In effect, 2,000 Ugandan soldiers suffering from AIDS or infected with the AIDS virus have been sent to the front in Eastern Province to rape women with the aim of spreading the disease", he said at the briefing attended by reporters.
"Does Kinshasa want the world to believe there is no AIDS in Congo" a senior Ugandan security official who saidhe has not heard about the current Congo claims said yesterday on condition of anonymity. Okitundu called on the World Health Organisation (WHO) "to witness so that this macabre operation can be forcefully condemned".
The WHO representative in Congo, Abdou Moudi who was present at the briefing, told Reuters he had not heard of the claim from any other source. "Certainly this is something we can investigate", he said.