KAMPALA

Some of the key UPC supporters who fled to exile after the 1985 coup and have remained strongly opposed to President Museveni's government will not come to Uganda to bury their leader Milton Obote.

Not even grief will get them to Kampala if that means giving political mileage to the Museveni government, which they consider a dictatorship.

Instead, these exiles - from countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany - have started arriving in Lusaka, Zambia, where another funeral service was slated to be held on Saturday.

An earlier funeral service was held on Friday in Johannesburg in South Africa where Obote, Uganda's first prime minister and two-time President, died of kidney failure on Monday at the age of 80.
Obote lived in Lusaka since his overthrow in July 1985, and his body will stop over there on its way back to Uganda.

Some of the prominent exiles descending on Lusaka include Mr George Okurapa from Canada, Mr Godfrey Ayoo from Germany, and Mr Yoga Adhola from the United States.

"We have made arrangements for members who cannot come back to Uganda to converge in Lusaka to bid the party president farewell," said Hajj Badru Wegulo, the head of the Constitutional Steering Committee, a top organ running UPC affairs.

Okurapa was a president of the Makerere Students Guild in the mid 1980s and a vocal member of the party's youth wing.

Ayoo was a lieutenant in the Uganda National Liberation Army, the national army. He fled Uganda with the help of the Catholic White Fathers.
Adhola was the editor of the party-owned newspaper, The People.

Another exile who will be paying his respects in Lusaka is Mr Chris Opoka Okumu, a prominent UPC stalwart living in Canada.

The head of the London UPC Chapter, Mr Joseph Ochieno, who retuned from exile earlier this year, lashed out at the government for "failing to create a conducive atmosphere for the return [of all exiles].

"We hope one day Uganda will be freely convenient for all of us to stay but as long as people still feel insecure, then there is still a problem," Ochieno said, speaking from Johannesburg from where Obote's body was to be flown to Lusaka on Saturday at 2 p.m.
"If there is a conducive atmosphere for the return of the body of their late party president, what about them?" said presidential spokesman Onapito Ekomoloit. "It's up to them to decide what to do."

In Lusaka, President Levy Mwanawasa and former Presidents Frederick Chiluba and Kenneth Kaunda are expected to pay their last respects to the man they hosted for two decades.

The body of the former President will arrive at Entebbe on Wednesday, October 19. The burial is set for Sunday, October 23 at Obote's rural home in Akokoro in Apac District. The fallen President always said he wanted to be laid to rest by his grandfather's side at the Abyeibuti Village in Akokoro.

There are those, however, who are opposed to burial at Akokoro, saying it is too remote a place.
Bishop John Odurkami of Lango Diocese has called on Obote's Oyima clan to not bury their kinsman "deep in the village where the public cannot have continued access to him".

The bishop, who was addressing district leaders from Apac, Lira, and Amolatar districts in Apac on Thursday, said the former leader should be buried at the Mayors Gardens in Lira where he started his political career nearly half a century ago.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY GEOFFREY OMARA