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Gay News: Statement came the day after President Obama described the bill as 'odious'
Uganda
Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill 'will be changed'
Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill - which has been making international gay news as the developed world has tracked its development - is likely to be changed before it becomes law, according to the country's deputy foreign minister Henry Okello Oryem.
Without giving details, Oryem told the BBC's Network Africa programme: "I am sure the bill will take a different form when it is tabled on the floor in parliament."
However, he stressed that as it was a private member's bill, the government did not have the power to alter it at this stage.
"Homosexuality is not a top priority for the people of Uganda. Our priority is to make sure there is food on the table of our people - that we deal with the issue of disease," he added.
In its original form, Ndorwa West MP David Baharti's bill was intended to intensify Uganda's already draconian legislation, firstly by increasing the long-standing maximum punishment for male homosexuality of 14 years in prison to life imprisonment.
But the bill's proposition of the death penalty for so-called "aggravated homosexuality" offences - defined as when one of the participants is a minor, HIV-positive, disabled or a "serial offender" has attracted even greater condemnation in Europe and the US, with direct or veiled threats of the withdrawal of aid.
Two weeks ago Baharti told a Ugandan newspaper he was willing to "amend some clauses without putting the values of the country at risk", which has been taken to mean that the death penalty will not be a feature of the final bill.
Despite his claim last year that "European homosexuals are recruiting in Africa" and recent complaint that every First World leader wanted to talk to him about "gays", Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has distanced himself from the bill, saying it did not represent the views of his government.
Oryem's statement came the day after President Obama's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, in which he described the bill as "odious".
"We may disagree about gay marriage," he told the assembled politicians and religious leaders, "but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are, whether it is here in the United States or...more extremely, in odious laws that are being proposed more recently in Uganda."
