Quite unlike him, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has maintained a studious silence in the 10 days since a section of Burundi’s military attempted a coup against President Pierre Nkurunziza.

He is considered the most influential leader in the Great Lakes region, where he has been the pointman for Western governments. His silence has therefore puzzled geopolitical analysts, who describe it as “calculated” and “more deafening” than the statements of other leaders in the region, particularly Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame.

The chairman of the East African Community, Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete, only issued a statement condemning the attempted coup and calling for a return to the constitutional order.

READ: EAC threatens to suspend Burundi

On the contrary, President Kagame did not mince his words over the crisis caused by President Nkurunziza’s shot at a third term after being at the helm since 2005.

“If your own citizens tell you ‘we don’t want you to lead us’, how do you say ‘I am staying whether you want me or not’?” asked President Kagame, who has often said that Rwanda cannot stand by and watch as another genocide unfolds in the region.

For President Museveni, responding to the Burundi crisis is a balancing act as he is conflicted by his own role in setting up the country’s leadership in 2005. In his silence, he is also delicately playing domestic and regional politics vis-à-vis the interests of Western powers.

Paris-based Global Research analyst Gearoid Colmain cites Washington’s hand in the activities of Burundi’s civil society and urban youths, who have overshadowed the mainstream political opposition.

“These activists are being generously funded by the US State Department think tank, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which, on the admission of its founder, functions as a front organisation for the CIA,” he wrote in a recent blog, Are the US and the EU Sponsoring Terrorism in Burundi?

Mr Colmain told The EastAfrican via e-mail that the US is blackmailing President Museveni.

Edgar Tabaro, a lawyer who has keenly followed Burundi’s post-Independence politics, concurred: “Given his role in delivering Nkurunziza as the unifier of Burundians in 2005, it would be a travesty for him to take sides.”

However, President Museveni’s press secretary, Tamale Mirundi, told The EastAfrican that the Ugandan leader had not made a public statement on Burundi because he “doesn’t take individual decisions” and that “he works through regional initiatives.”

This argument nonetheless falls on its face given Uganda’s swift deployment of troops in South Sudan only four days after war broke out there in mid December 2013.

Mr Mirundi said: “Museveni doesn’t play to the gallery; even if he was seriously involved in Burundi, he wouldn’t do it in the media.”