KAMPALA. President Museveni and his Equatoguinean counterpart Teodoro Obiang Nguema on Thursday held private discussions on security developments in the oil rich Central African country.
The meeting at State House-Entebbe between the two long serving leaders on the continent was the third in a space of less than year.
President Nguema early this month survived a coup plot which the country’s security minister Nicolas Obama Nchama, in a public radio message linked to “mercenaries recruited by militants from certain radical opposition parties in collaboration with the Cameroon security services”.
He has previously, in 2004 survived a coup plotted by mercenaries linked to son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and another in 2009 also linked to mercenaries reportedly paid by the country’s opposition.
The Ugandan State minister for International Relations, Mr Henry Oryem Okello, told Saturday Monitor that the two leaders discussed the security situation “not just in Equatorial Guinea but in Central Africa at large”.
“They spent time discussing that and evaluating the situation,” Mr Oryem said.
President Nguema was accompanied on the one-day state visit by his minister in- charge of presidential missions, Mr Alejandro Evima Owono and external security minister Juan Antonio Bibang Nchuchuma.
No additional troops
Asked whether President Nguema requested for additional UPDF troops, as our sources intimated, to reinforce his military capacity, Mr Oryem said “that wasn’t discussed.”
“In any case Uganda’s troops abroad are already overstretched in Somalia,” he added.
The UPDF maintains a contingent of more than 150 troops in Equatorial Guinea.
The troops were deployed between late 2016 and early last year on a covert mission of reinforcing President Obiang’s security and officially to strengthen capacity of the Guinean armed forces.
The troops are said to have left with own military hardware, which the army spokesperson, Brig Richard Karemire, denied last year.
An official communique of the state visit indicated that the leaders “noted progress in cooperation in the areas of defence and security, energy and oil, diplomatic, economic and social cultural sectors.”
