Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni said he backed economic integration but said Africa was too diverse for one government.
Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, looks increasingly like a dynastic ruler bent on enriching his clan.
Mr Museveni's is nowhere near as bad as its predecessors, but neither is it a paragon.
Even Mr Museveni's admirers wonder whether he is the right man to safeguard his own legacy.
Although Mr Museveni allows a reasonably free press, he has long suppressed multi-party politics.
MPs were invited to tea with Mr Museveni, who tried to charm them into line.
The tiff is all the more baffling because Mr Museveni and Mr Kagame were once comrades-in-arms.
Mr Museveni claims that he needs to keep troops in Congo to secure his borders.
In 1989, President Yoweri Museveni liberalized the beer industry, and indigenous players crept forward.
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"I will communicate with Museveni through the holy spirits and not through the telephone, " he once said.
In the 1990s, Mr Museveni certainly used aid to enact reforms that helped rebuild Uganda's devastated economy.
Another person central to his roundabout journey to becoming DR Congo's vice-president was Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
They can make things awkward for Mr Museveni's ruling National Resistance Movement, especially around Kampala, the capital.
The management of the referendum was a crucial test, and Mr Museveni has not handled it well.
What, they ask, will happen when Mr Museveni goes and perhaps a less good ruler takes over?
So Ugandans were surprised to hear last week that Mr Museveni has decided to allow parties after all.
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Voters who want more political freedom may also have to accept that Mr Museveni can keep on running.
That may be bad news for Uganda's opposition, which wants to oust Mr Museveni in next year's election.
Mr Museveni feels slighted by his former subordinate, for not showing him the respect due to an elder.
Until recently, Mr Museveni was able to pursue his northern war without his western friends taking much notice.
Ambassadors are warning Mr Museveni and his governing circle of the dangers of putting personal interests above national ones.
The Buganda kingdom, the largest of the country's four big ones, helped vote Mr Museveni, an Ankole, into office.
Mr Museveni found that in taking on the southern African states, he was trying to punch above his weight.
Will Mr Museveni act more vigorously against his brother and other senior ministers?
Mr Museveni and Mr Kagame have, in the past, quickly sorted out conflicts between their forces on the ground.
As well as grumbling monarchies, Mr Museveni must satisfy his party's own grandees.
Mr Museveni's detractors say that his luck may at last have run out.
President Daniel arap Moi does not share Mr Museveni's taste for radical solutions.
Well and good, but Mr Museveni's people are also hoping to take this opportunity to get rid of presidential-term limits.
At least one European country has threatened to withhold its money if Mr Museveni does not reconsider his line on Congo.
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