Kampala: President Museveni has said Uganda is unlikely to achieve Millennium Development Goals of reducing under-five children deaths by two-thirds and shrink maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015. "It is only in the areas of maternal and child health that we may not achieve the set [MDG] targets by 2015," he said while addressing the 65th UN General Assembly in New York on Friday. Some 135 of 1000 Ugandan children die before celebrating their first birth day and 13.7 per cent pass on before the fifth birthday, according to UNDP statistics, while 435 mothers die of every 100, 000 giving birth.

Mr Museveni, who skipped the early week MDG summit, gave no reason for Uganda's probable failure but unveiled before world leaders a new blue-print that he said will make success possible. The game-changing measures, he said, include renewed investments in effective antenatal care, skilled birth attendance, family planning and better emergency response.

World leaders in 2000 adopted eight targets to be achieved by 2015 to better human welfare globally. Other goals include ending poverty and hunger, ensuring free primary education, eliminating gender disparity in school enrolment, combating HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability and a global partnership for development.

In New York, President Museveni who said Uganda is on course to achieve six of the eight targets, however, said "we have never believed in donor-anchored MDGs as a sustainable solution".

"MDGs should be anchored on the growth and transformation of the economies of the target countries," he said, happy that some Western economic analysts such as McKinsey Global Institute now appreciate Africa's special potential. The Institute recently ranked Uganda among "transition economies" in categorisations piling other countries as diversified, oil-exporting or pre-transition economies.

"I am glad, therefore, that the cloud of Afro-pessimism is dispersing," Mr Museveni said, according to a copy of his speech availed by the Permanent Mission of Uganda to the UN. "The opinions of the Afro-pessimists are being consigned to where they have always belonged - on the dung heap of history."

The President, speaking on the theme; Re-affirming the Central Role of the United Nations in Global Governance, said the 53 African countries - whose combined consumption is estimated to leap to $1.4 trillion from $860 million in 2008 - requires development assistance only to fix broken transportation infrastructure and electricity.

"If our development partners could concentrate on assisting infrastructure development, Africa's transition would be that much faster," he said, "All the same a country like Uganda is transitioning. Aid in relevant sectors is welcome."

Earlier on Thursday, Mr Museveni held talks with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and discussed, among other things, governance and security in the Great Lakes as well as the upcoming South Sudan secession referendum. "The meeting centred on bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest," State House said in a statement yesterday that gave no specifics. "On the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) on Sudan, President Museveni advised the two parties to ensure that it is fully implemented and the referendum held as scheduled," the statement read in part.

The January 9, 2011 plebiscite is to determine whether the largely black, Christian southern Sudan should break away from the Muslim, Arab North - a sticky issue that kept the two sides fighting until the January 2005 pact negotiated and signed under the aegis of Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

Sudan Vice President, Mr Ali Uthman Taha, who represented President Omar Bashir, assured the summit that his country was committed to full implementation of the CPA; the holding of a peaceful referendum and the comprehensive resolution of the conflict in Darfur.

Mr Museveni had said under the Declaration of Principles (DOP) of the 2005 CPA, the Khartoum government had rejected the option of creating a secular state and opted to allow self-determination for Southern Sudan - and so there should be no "delays or variations".

The meeting on Sudan, which was attended by US President Barack Obama, was convened by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

Keywords: MDGs, social policy, Uganda