ENTEBBE, Uganda, March 14 (AFP) - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said Monday that a proposed regional peace mission to Somalia will deploy with or without the consent of warlords who have expressed opposition to it.
"We are going to deploy with or without the support of the warlords," Museveni told defense ministers from the seven-nation east African Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) meeting here.
"For the warlords to say that they are protecting the people and yet they have guns, they have taken these people hostage and we cannot accept this," he said, referring to recent comments by some warlords who have vowed to oppose participation in the force by troops from neighboring countries.
"It is a shame for one of the ancient races in Africa to suffer for so long as we look on," Museveni said. "What are we waiting for?"
Defense ministers and military officials from IGAD -- which comprises Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda and nominally Somalia -- are meeting outside the Ugandan capital this week to work out a deployment plan for the mission that is to cost about 500 million dollars for eight months.
Museveni asked the officials to work out a deployment program as soon as possible and that he, as the current chairman of IGAD, was waiting for it.
The African Union (AU) last month authorized IGAD to deploy an initial peacekeeping force to Somalia to help the lawless country's transitional government relocate there from exile in Kenya.
Despite the AU authorization, some warlords have objected to the presence in the force of soldiers from Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya which they say have ulterior motives in participating.
Museveni said the warlords had no business imposing their will on which countries should participate or not.
"Why should the warlords, for example reject Ethiopia and Kenya?" he asked rhetorically. "If the two countries go there what will happen?"
Museveni also used the occasion to take some swipes at the United Nations and Europe, saying they have always failed to have solutions to problems in the world's poorest continent.
"I do not remember any positive change in Africa brought about by the UN or Europe," he said.
Somalia has been in chaos without any functioning central authority since the ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 turned the nation into a patchwork of fiefdoms ruled by warlords.
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