The Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has commended Iran for persistently resisting western pressure directed against Iran’s nuclear program.
Museveni said, “We know what is happening in Iran, too much pressure from the West but we are glad that you can manage,” he said.
He noted that Uganda supports all countries having nuclear energy for peaceful purposes especially for energy.
Museveni has in effect accepted an invitation to attend a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement due next month in Iran.
The Non-Aligned Movement is a group of states considering themselves not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. As of 2012, the movement had 120 members and 21 observer countries.
Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania are East Africas major economies that have strong and historical cooperation with the Islamic republic of Iran.
In 2009 a Canadian firm, IBI Corporation, was hired to give Uganda technical guidance on how to generate nuclear energy.
IBI President met President Museveni in January 2009 with a proposal that they can turn the recently discovered uranium into nuclear energy.
A team of experts, businessmen and Uganda government officials coordinated by IBI, formed an advisory board that sought to develop the Nuclear Energy Programme for Uganda (NEPU).
However, experts warned Uganda to go slow on a plan to generating electricity using uranium arguing it is a very costly venture.
It takes about 10 years to build a nuclear power plant at a minimum cost of $10 billion and at least 15 years to train a nuclear scientist to run a plant.
Uganda oil industry is expected to bring in more cash to the economy that the government badly needs to modernize and push its economy to a takeoff level.
A few weeks ago, Tanzania was in the spotlight over the issue of suffering possible sanctions slammed against Iran by the United States. Tanzania was accused for allegedly reflagging of Iranian Oil tankers.
U.S. lawmaker Howard Berman had earlier said that Tanzania could face sanctions that President Barack Obama signed into law if the Iran tankers were allowed to continue sailing under the Tanzanian flag.
Berman said Congress would also have “no choice” but to consider whether to continue the range of bilateral US programmes with Tanzania.
In 2009 November, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad travelled to Kenya with a delegation of more than 100 officials and private businessmen.
The Ahmadinejad led government believes that expanding political and economic ties with east Africa’s largest economy is a priority for Iran.
Iran exports industrial oil, chemicals and carpets to Kenya and Kenya considers Iran a key market for its tea.
Iran’s volume of trade with Kenya is estimated at over $500 million.
Kenya government clearly told Iran president that it was urgently looking for a partner, who can provide technical know-how to develop a nuclear energy program for Kenya.
The United states government hold a view that Iran must abandon its nuclear program.
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)
The organization was founded in Belgrade in 1961, and was largely the brainchild of Yugoslavia’s President, Josip Broz Tito, India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt’s second President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah, Indonesia’s first President, Sukarno and Ethiopia’s emperor Haile Selassie.
All five leaders were prominent advocates of a middle course for states in the Developing World between the Western and Eastern blocs in the Cold War.
The phrase itself was first used to represent the doctrine by Indian diplomat and statesman V.K. Krishna Menon in 1953, at the United Nations.
The purpose of the organization as stated in the speech given by Fidel Castro during the Havana Declaration of 1979 is to ensure “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries” in their “struggle against imperialism,colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.”
The countries of the Non-Aligned Movement represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations’s members and contain 55% of the world population. Membership is particularly concentrated in countries considered to be developing or part of the Third World.
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