Ugandan president sworn in as thousands welcome Besigye

Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni being sworn in on May 12, 2011.

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni was sworn in for a fourth term Thursday as his rival Kizza Besigye returned home to a tumultuous welcome following treatment in Kenya after a police beating.

The 66-year-old Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, took the oath of office before a crowd of thousands of supporters and the leaders of a host of African countries including Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

"I, Yoweri Museveni, swear in the name of all-mighty God that I will be faithful, swear allegiance to the people and to the Republic of Uganda and that I will preserve and protect the Constitution, so help me God," he said.

His oath, taken at a ceremony at an airstrip in central Kampala, was followed by a gun salute.

Thousands also turned out to welcome home opposition leader Besigye, Museveni's strongest challenger in the February 18 elections which the incumbent won comfortably but opposition groups said was fraudulent.

Besigye, who has lost elections to Museveni three times in a row, flew in from neighbouring Kenya where he spent several days for treatment after being hurt by police during an anti-government protest last month.

"I am happy that even when I was not around the defiance campaign continued," he told a handful of journalists on his arrival at the airport, which he left in a convoy under police escort.

The convoy advanced at walking pace followed by supporters on motorcycles, while others lined the road in their thousands, cheering and waving greenery.

The Forum for Democratic Change party leader, wearing a blue shirt and with his arm in a sling following a gunshot wound to the finger, waved at the crowd who danced to loud music as his convoy crawled forward.

One supporter carried a placard reading: "Besigye must be sworn in as president today."

At one point, military police forced all motorbike taxis heading towards the airport to turn around and fired tear gas at a crowd of supporters.

Party officials said Besigye would stop off to address supporters along the way into the capital. He has vowed to continue anti-government protests despite a police crackdown which has seen at least nine people shot dead by security forces.

The veteran opposition leader last month embarked on a series of "walk to work" protests against soaring food and fuel prices which the opposition blames on the government.

Besigye, 55, was attacked by police in one such demonstration on April 28. Police smashed the windows of his car, sprayed him with tear gas and arrested him for the fourth time in a month for participating in demonstrations.

U.S. attacks militants in Pakistan as pressure grows

Activists associated with a social group from a citizen forum hold placards during a rally in favour of Pakistan's army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Islamabad May 11, 2011. About 150 More...
Credit: REUTERS/Mian Khursheed

ISLAMABAD | Thu May 12, 2011 7:39am

(Parclays) - A U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles at militants in Pakistan on Thursday, killing eight of them, Pakistani officials said, the third such attack since U.S. forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout.

The killing of the al Qaeda chief in a U.S. raid on May 2 has strained ties between Washington and Islamabad, with suspicion in the United States that Pakistan knew where bin Laden was hiding and Pakistan angered by a raid it saw as a violation of sovereignty.

The drone strikes also anger many Pakistanis and are a source of friction between the allies. Pakistan officially objects to the attacks although U.S. officials say they are carried out on an understanding with Pakistan.

A drone fired two missiles at a vehicle in the North Waziristan region that was heading toward the Afghan border, killing eight militants, the Pakistani officials said.

"At least four drones are still flying over the area," said one of the officials, who declined to be identified.

The U.S. CIA regularly launches attacks with its pilotless aircraft at militants in Pakistan's Pashtun tribal lands who cross into Afghanistan to battle Western forces there.

But the third such strike since bin Laden's killing indicated an intensification of the attacks compared with the weeks before the Saudi-born militant was killed.

The U.S. raid on bin Laden's compound has embarrassed and enraged Pakistan's military and has added to already strained ties.

Pakistan rejects allegations that it was either incompetent in tracking down the man behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States or complicit in hiding him in the town of Abbottabad just 50 km (30 miles) from Islamabad.

The United States wants to question bin Laden's three wives, who were found in his hideout after the U.S. raid and are in Pakistani custody, but Pakistan has yet to agree.

U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter held talks at the Foreign Ministry but neither side gave any details.

Bin Laden's killing has also led to domestic criticism of the government and military in Pakistan, over both the fact bin laden had been able to live in the country apparently undetected, and over the secret U.S. raid.

Opposition leader and former premier Nawaz Sharif accused the military's powerful spy agency of negligence and incompetence.

Sharif, who heads the largest opposition party, rejected a government decision to put an army general in charge of the inquiry into intelligence lapses that led to bin Laden's killing, calling instead for a judicial commission to dispel doubts about the objectivity of the investigation.

The U.S. special forces who swooped in on helicopters from Afghanistan to kill bin Laden were undetected by Pakistani forces.

U.S. lawmakers are questioning whether Pakistan is serious about fighting militants in the region, and some have called for a suspension of American aid to Islamabad.

Pakistan's pervasive Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has a long history of contacts with Islamist militants.

The United States had not accused Pakistani officials of sheltering bin Laden but has said he must have had some sort of support network and they want to know about it.

Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, an army general who seized power in 1999 and lives in exile in London, told ABC News that there was a possibility that rogue junior officers in the country's intelligence and military might have been aware of bin Laden's whereabouts for years.

The United States has sent intelligence extracted from material seized from bin Laden's compound to several foreign governments, U.S. and Western counter-terrorism officials told Reuters.

Among the material being examined most closely is what a U.S. official described as a "handwritten manual" that American experts believe was penned by bin Laden himself.

The United States and the governments with which it has shared data have found no evidence of specific, imminent plots against U.S. or Western targets, officials said.

In Washington, a U.S. senator who was shown photographs of bin Laden after he was shot said they left no doubt he was dead.

James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said he saw 15 photographs and described some that showed brain matter protruding from an eye socket

"They're gruesome, of course, because it was taken right after the incident," Inhofe told Fox News.

U.S. President Barack Obama decided not to release post-mortem photos of bin Laden because doing so could incite violence and be used as an al Qaeda propaganda tool.