(Reuters) - Uganda’s ruling National Resistance Movement party on Sunday endorsed President Yoweri Museveni as its candidate in next year’s presidential election.
Museveni, who came to power in 1986, will vie for his fourth term in office as east Africa’s third largest economy gears up to become an oil producer.
Here is a timeline on Uganda in the last 40 years:
January 1971 - Army commander Idi Amin seizes power in a coup, while President Milton Obote is out of the country, and launches eight years of terror and economic chaos.
August 1972 - Amin expels 75,000 Asians.
1976 - Amin declares himself president-for-life.
October 1978 - Uganda invades Tanzania pursuing a territorial claim. Tanzania retaliates.
February 1979 - Tanzania invades and helps Ugandan rebels overthrow Amin in April. Yusufu Lule installed as president, but quickly replaced by Godfrey Binaisa.
May 1980 - Binaisa overthrown by army and Obote wins rigged elections in December.
1985 - Obote is deposed in coup and replaced by General Tito Okello.
January 1986 - National Resistance Army rebels take Kampala and install Yoweri Museveni as president.
February 1989 - A new parliament, the National Resistance Council, is formed.
June 1995 - New constitution legalizes political parties, but maintains ban on political activity.
May 1996 - Museveni wins Uganda’s first direct presidential election.
July 2000 - Ugandan voters reject multi-party politics in favor of Museveni’s “no-party” system.
March 2001 - Museveni wins flawed presidential elections. The constitution bars him from standing again in 2006.
March 2002 - Sudan, Uganda sign agreement aimed at containing Ugandan rebel group, Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), active along common border. Led by “prophet” Joseph Kony the rebels have kidnapped an estimated 30,000 people and displaced 1.6 million people in 18 years of war.
December 2004 - The government and the LRA hold their first peace talks in over a decade. But negotiations fail.
June 2005 - Uganda’s parliament votes to scrap term limits, a move critics say is aimed at making Museveni president-for-life.
October 2005 - The International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for five LRA commanders, including LRA leader Joseph Kony.
February 2006 - Museveni wins re-election with 59 percent to 37 percent over his former doctor and nearest rival Kizza Besigye, official figures show.
July 2006 - The deputy leader of the LRA ventures out of the bush for a meeting on the Sudan-Congo border with a delegation seeking to persuade the rebels to agree to peace.
August 2006 - Uganda and LRA rebels sign on August 26 a cessation of hostilities deal at talks in Sudan in a major breakthrough in efforts to end one of Africa’s longest wars.
-- Three days later a ceasefire comes into force. Subsequent peace talks are marred by regular walk-outs.
November 2008 - Kony tells traditional elders he will not sign a final peace deal until the arrest warrant for him is scrapped.
-- On December 14, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan launch a joint assault on Kony’s base in Congo after Kony failed again to sign an accord to end the two-decade war.
February 2010 - Museveni has placed his presidential guard under an elite army unit commanded by his son, Lieutenant Colonel Keinerugaba Muhoozi, increasing opposition suspicions that he is quietly grooming his son for succession.
July 2010 - Somali Islamists carry out two bomb attacks that kill 79 people in Kampala, at a restaurant and a sports club packed with fans watching the World Cup final. The al Shabaab Islamist group claims responsibility in revenge for Uganda’s contribution to a peacekeeping force in Somalia.
August 2010 - Museveni says he will contest the 2011 presidential poll, extending a presidency that started in 1986.
Sept 2010 - Museveni elected unopposed as NRM flagbearer in 2011’s presidential ballot.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.