By Tim Cocks

KAMPALA, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Uganda's strategic objective in sending peacekeepers to help pacify chaotic Somalia is to halt the flood of weapons fuelling conflict and banditry in other east African nations like itself, the army said on Wednesday.

Uganda Army spokesman Felix Kulayigye said stability in the chaotic Horn of Africa country would stem the flow of automatic weapons into its own lawless northern and eastern provinces.

"The small arms proliferation in the region comes from Somalia. We have an arms corridor from the Horn of Africa to eastern DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Uganda is at the centre," he said.

So far only Uganda has offered troops for a proposed African peacekeeping mission to stabilise Somalia after a two-week war in which Ethiopian-backed government forces ousted Islamists, who controlled much of the south.

Nigeria and South Africa are also possibilities.

Western and African diplomats have urged the quick deployment of the force -- endorsed by the United Nations before the war -- to stabilise the nation awash with guns despite a 1992 U.N. arms embargo.

Uganda's northeastern Karamoja region and neighbouring Kenya's Turkana region have for years suffered banditry and interclan fighting between cattle-raiders armed with AK-47s.

Uganda has described clashes between its forces and armed Karamojong warriors in recent months -- in which at least 14 government troops and 55 civilians were killed -- as a war.

Aid agencies say insecurity and gun crime in Karamoja has left it the country's least developed region.

President Yoweri Museveni last week pledged a battalion of 700-800 Ugandan peacekeepers trained for the Somalia mission but Uganda's parliament still has to approve the deployment and many politicians have grave doubts.

"Whoever opposes deployment does not see the dangers of instability in Somalia," Kulayigye said. "If we want to address small arms, we must address the question of failed states in the region."

Some officials have said a clear mission and exit strategy need to be defined before soldiers go in. But if Museveni wants the deployment, it will sail through a parliament dominated by his National Resistance Movement party.

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