The UN report, due to be published on Friday, was leaked
last month and covers more than 600 serious crimes committed by various forces
during the 1993-2003 period in which tens of thousands of people were killed in
fighting in Congo.
The report also alleges that Rwandan soldiers may have
committed genocide in Congo during the same period.
Rwanda threatened to withdraw its troops from a UN
peacekeeping mission to Darfur but decided not to after UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon visited Kigali earlier this month. "It is deeply regrettable
that the authors ... chose to undermine the efforts of countries of the region
to contribute toward regional and international peace and security,"
Ugandan Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa wrote in an official response to
the United Nations in Geneva.
"Such sinister tactics undermine Uganda's resolve to
continue contributing to, and participating in various regional and
international peacekeeping operations such as AMISOM, UNMIS, UNAMID, UNMIL,
UNOCI, UNMIT," it said, referring to missions in Sudan, Liberia, Ivory
Coast and East Timor.
The Ugandan army has also dismissed the report saying it
lacked detail and sound evidence.
Uganda and Burundi have contributed all the troops in an
African Union mission in Somalia known as AMISOM that is supported by
Washington and is keeping insurgents from overthrowing Mogadishu's
Western-backed government.
Burundi has also protested against allegations in the draft
report that its troops committed human right abuses in Congo too.
Kutesa said the report alleged the Ugandan army had
committed crimes in an area it had not even deployed into and that his
government was not consulted through the process.
"Uganda rejects that draft report in its entirety and
demands that it not be published," he said.
Ugandan troops entered Congo in the 1990s to uproot the
Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel Ugandan group that had established
bases there.
Rwanda, on the other hand, invaded Congo ostensibly to hunt
down Hutu fighters who had taken part in the 1994 genocide and fled into the
east of the country.
UN peacekeepers were widely criticized for failing to
prevent the Rwandan slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus that ended
only after Tutsi-led fighters under current President Paul Kagame retook
control of the country.
The UN report documents several incidents in Congo where
Ugandan soldiers are accused of atrocities such as massacres of civilians,
torture and destroying critical civilian infrastructure.
"The draft report under reference is a compendium of
rumours deeply flawed in methodology, sourcing and standard proof," Kutesa
said in the statement.
