KAMPALA, April 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said the Zambia-based former president and Uganda People's Congress (UPC) leader, Apollo Milton Obote, should answer for the crimes against humanity that were committed in his time when he returns.

    "I now hear that Obote wants to return. They should tell him that he must answer for the crimes that were committed by his government. They murdered people in a deliberate way," Museveni was quoted by Monday's New Vision as saying.

    This was Museveni's first comment since UPC's defacto leadership in Uganda announced, two week ago, that Obote was to return on May 27 from Zambia.

    Addressing a wedding reception on Saturday, Museveni said "Obote's government is responsible for the deaths of very many of our people here and elsewhere in Uganda. He must answer for them when he returns. People were killed deliberately. This is unacceptable."

    Museveni on February 6, 1981, started a guerrilla war that eventually drove Obote into exile in 1985.

    Last week, Ugandan Minister of State for Information Nsaba Buturo said that if the exiled former president returns to Uganda,he will have to account for the death of 300,000 people believed to have been killed in Luweero Triangle between 1981 and 1985.

    Buturo made the remarks following an announcement by the opposition party, the UPC that former president Obote will come back to Uganda on May 27, 2005 from Lusaka, Zambia where he has been in exile since July 1985.

    The 81-year-old Obote, as prime minister of Uganda, received the instruments of power from the British colonialists in 1962 andwas president until he was toppled by Idi Amin in 1971 whereafter he fled to Tanzania where he stayed in exile until 1980.

    After a force made up of Ugandan exiles and Tanzanian soldiers drove Idi Amin out of power in 1979, Obote returned to power on May 27, 1980, but he was again toppled by Tito Okello Lutwa in July 1985 and fled to Lusaka where he has been living in exile to this day. Enditem