Ireland: President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, on a one-day visit to Dublin yesterday, rejected criticisms of his government by Mr John O'Shea of the aid agency GOAL as "stupid and contemptible".
He said Mr O'Shea's refusal to meet him reminded him of an African saying: "You wish for the buffalo to come and, when the buffalo comes, you run away."
When contacted later by The Irish Times, Mr O'Shea, the agency's chief executive, refused to respond to any personal criticisms and said: "Everything I have said is based on United Nations reports."
He commended the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Tom Kitt, for redirecting €10 million in Irish aid to Uganda through non-government channels and urged Mr Kitt to tell President Museveni there would be no more aid on a government-to-government basis.
At a news conference in a Dublin hotel, President Museveni was asked about Mr O'Shea's claims that the Uganda government was tainted with corruption and had been engaged in a genocidal war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
"We are the vanguard fighters against corruption," he said. "Our movement, called the National Resistance Movement, is the vanguard warrior against criminality, against genocide, against corruption."
Recalling the notorious era of the late Idi Amin, he said: "The Idi Amin regime was an epitome of all those things you are talking about: extra-judicial murders, they killed half a million people; corruption; genocide. It is our movement which stopped those killings in Uganda. We are the ones who stopped the human haemorrhage in Uganda."
Much progress had been made since then, but there was still some covert corruption, in the form of embezzlement of public funds, influence-peddling and graft and "some abuse of office here and there" and a battle was being waged against all this.
Institutions were being put in place, which were unique in Africa, to deal with any form of corruption. Under the Leadership Code, all political leaders were obliged by law publicly to declare their assets.
"It is stupid and contemptible to accuse a person like myself of either being corrupt or condoning corruption, because we are people who are able to sacrifice ourselves, to die for our country and when we were fighting, many of our colleagues died."
Commenting on the fact that a brother of his, Mr Salim Saleh, was linked to reports about corruption, the president said he had sacked him from the army for drinking to excess but allowed him back in an advisory role in government when he reformed to some extent.
"Then he got in some other problems, I dismissed him again."
On the Congolese war, he said the then-government of the DRC had organised massacres against Ugandan citizens: "We had to take action to defend ourselves."
Responding to the claim that he had been responsible for the deaths of five million people in the Congo, he replied: "I am denying it."
Under the Uganda constitution, Mr Museveni should leave office at the end of this, his second term. However, there has been speculation that the constitution might be changed. Asked if he wished to serve a third term, he said: "The issue is not whether I myself will run for a third term . . . the debate is not about Museveni, the debate is about the principle". When it was resolved, he would be able to comment.