KAMPALA: Uganda has warned that a United Nations report implicating it in war crimes in DR Congo jeopardized its commitment to regional peace missions, according to a letter obtained by AFP Thursday.
Uganda leads an African Union force in Somalia where it has some 4,300 men and much smaller numbers of military and police personnel in south Sudan, Darfur, Ivory Coast and East Timor.
"Such sinister tactics undermine Uganda’s resolve to continue contributing to, and participating in, various regional and international peacekeeping operations," said the letter by Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa to the UN.
The draft UN report into conflicts in the DR Congo from 1993 to 2003 details several incidents where Ugandan troops (UPDF) are accused of atrocities such as the massacre of civilians, torture and destroying infrastructure that led to civilian deaths.
Ugandan forces backed the Congolese rebels who toppled then President Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997 and occupied various parts of eastern DR Congo until 2003.
The report, expected to be published Friday, is based on data collected by UN investigators from July 2008 to June 2009 and aims to expose "crimes never previously documented" during the ten years of the DR Congo conflict.
But the Ugandan minister termed the document "a compendium of rumors, deeply flawed in methodology, sourcing and standard of proof."
He said Uganda "rejects the draft report in its entirety and demands that it not be published."
The International Criminal Court had in a 2005 ruling found that Uganda violated international human rights law and international humanitarian law during its occupation of parts of DR Congo.
The Hague-based court ordered Uganda to pay reparations to Kinshasa, but Kampala has yet to comply.
