Precarious Coup

By JANICE C. SIMPSON

Vendors selling popcorn and soft drinks moved through the crowd of journalists and diplomats gathered in the tiny border town of Busia, Kenya, about 235 miles northwest of Nairobi. The throng was there to greet the first convoy of cars and buses carrying nearly 300 Americans, Europeans and Asians who were evacuated from Uganda last week following the coup on July 27 that ousted President Apollo Milton Obote. In contrast to the friendly welcome, the travelers gave chilling eyewitness accounts of the confusion and fear that shook the Ugandan capital of Kampala after the coup. Bands of drunken soldiers armed with Soviet-made Kalashnikov rifles, sometimes replaced by gangs of thugs brandishing long knives, roamed through the city, looting stores, stealing cars and harassing Ugandans and foreigners alike.

At least ten people were killed. Several British residents were beaten. An Indian businessman described how soldiers broke into his home, forced his family to lie on the living-room floor and then ransacked the house, stealing radios, money and a video recorder. They took "everything they could carry," he said. Marauders burned scores of buildings and shot up electrical facilities, causing blackouts in parts of the capital.

At week's end the rampage apparently had ceased, but there were reports from western Uganda that angry mobs were starting to take revenge against Obote's supporters. The homes of two former ministers were looted and burned, including the house of the man who headed one of Obote's most dreaded police units. Obote, who has been charged with killing more than 100,000 people in a campaign of terror, has fled to Nairobi.

General Tito Okello, the 71-year-old army commander who was sworn in last week as chief of state, imposed a curfew and urged calm. He promised to hold elections in the East African nation within a year. But the survival of the transitional government is precarious. Okello, a career soldier with little political experience, has appointed Obote's former Vice President and Minister of Defense, Paulo Muwanga, 60, as Prime Minister. This has caused alarm and suspicion among many Ugandans. Opposition parties charge that Muwanga organized fraudulent elections that put Obote in power in 1980, after the bloody dictator Idi Amin Dada was overthrown.

The leaders of the Democratic Party, who formed the main political opposition to Obote's Uganda People's Congress, refused to attend Muwanga's installation last week. A senior minister in neighboring Kenya reflected the view of many of Obote's opponents, when he said, "The Ugandan government has gone out of one door and come back into the room through another door, minus only Milton Obote."

General Okello forged a firm alliance with Basilio Olara Okello, the brigade commander who led the coup. The two men are related but are both members of the Acholi tribe. It was the belief that Obote discriminated against the Acholis and favored officers from his own Lango tribe that helped spark the coup. The general's greatest challenge will be to win the backing of the National Resistance Army, a guerrilla group led by former Defense Minister Yoweri Musevni, which was at the forefront of the struggle against Obote. "Forming a military government without Musevni means it cannot last," says a Ugandan political analyst. The rebels demand a greater say in the formation of the new government and strongly object to Muwanga's appointment. Western diplomats say that armed N.R.A. troops may already have begun to move into the capital. Said the Ugandan analyst: "Things are very unstable, very unpredictable." --By Janice C. Simpson. Reported by James Wilde/Nairobi

With reporting by Reported by James Wilde/Nairobi