THE KATUNA/GATUNA TALKS YIELDED NULL

By Correspondent 
Katuna border remains closed two years since talks started. The Katuna/Gatuna border between Uganda and Rwanda remains closed to human and cargo traffic more than two years after Rwandan President Paul Kagame ordered its closure.

Adonia Ayebare, Uganda’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, says he hopes that relations between the two countries will improve soonest.

“I am optimistic that within about three weeks or one month, we should have something to talk about,”  Adonia Ayebare says.

In December 2019,   Ayebare was sent to Kigali as President Museveni’s special envoy with a special message to President Paul Kagame.

However, sources within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told press that very little progress has been made to bring an end to the protracted political dispute between the two countries. When Rwandan authorities first announced the decision, it was claimed that the closure would allow  renovations at the border.

Cargo traffic was then diverted to Mirama hills and Kyanika border posts in Ntungamo and Kisoro districts, but those too were later closed.

Kigali shortly after issued a travel advisory to its nationals warning them against travelling to Uganda, which it accused of, among other things, abducting its citizens and detaining them in ungazetted areas.

It also accused Uganda of hosting and facilitating activities aimed at destabilising Rwanda.

“Very little progress has been made to resolve some of the sticky issues here. Every meeting seems to bring up more issues,” a source in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Sunday Monitor.

Hon Henry Okello-Oryem, the State Minister for Foreign Affairs, however, insists that a lot is going on behind the scenes to normalise relations.

“There are ongoing efforts on both sides at both the highest levels and at the level of the ministries of Foreign Affairs to find mechanisms for normalising relations between the two countries. For example, Rwanda’s new ambassador presented her credentials to Foreign Affairs minister Sam Kuteesa yesterday (Tuesday),”  Okello Oryem said.

Since the border was closed, there has  been at least four tripartite meetings involving presidents Joao Lourenço of Angola and Mr Félix Tshisekedi of the DR Congo, and a series of lower level meetings between officials of Foreign Affairs ministries of the two nations, but they have not yielded much.

The first meeting was held in the Angolan Capital, Luanda, in February 2019. The meeting, which was chaired by President Lourenco and attended by his counterpart Tshisekedi,  aimed at easing tensions between the two countries and finding a lasting solution to the cause of their problems.

During the second meeting in Launda on August 21, 2019 , presidents Museveni and Kagame signed a peace pact aimed at ending months of tensions amid counter accusations of espionage, political killings and economic sabotage.