Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni says UN peacekeeping missions make governments lazy to focus on internal reconciliation to end deadly conflicts.Museveni, according to a State House statement issued on Thursday, made the comments while meeting India’s Foreign minister Salman Khurshi, who paid a courtesy call on him on Wednesday at Entebbe State House, 40 kilometres south of the capital Kampala.Museveni criticised the UN system of maintaining peacekeeping as opposed to building internal capacity.“External support by the UN makes governments lazy and they don’ t focus on internal reconciliation,” Museveni said. Internal solutions“The mistake is internal actors with no correct vision and the UN, which does not focus on internal capacity building, but instead focusing on peace-keeping all the time. Without internal solutions, you can’t have peace, “ he added.The Ugandan leader was responding to concerns by the minister over the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, where India lost three of its peacekeeping staff in the conflicts in the respective countries.The UN has a peacekeeping mission in the eastern DR Congo, where hundreds of thousands of people have been rendered homeless, with many fleeing to neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda amid protracted conflicts.The international body also has a peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s Darfur region.
