Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni insisted on Wednesday he did not support the persecution of homosexuals despite the reintroduction of a draconian anti gay-bill in parliament last week.

The president told BBC's Hard Talk programme that he did not consider homosexuality to be normal, but that it may be be tolerated if it was kept behind closed doors.

"Homosexuals — in small numbers — have existed in our part of black Africa," he explained in the interview, to be aired in full on Thursday.

"They were never prosecuted, they were never discriminated, but the difference between us and... western Europe is the promotion of homosexuality, as if it is something good."

The lawmaker behind the proposed bill that sparked an international outcry said on Friday he wanted to drop clauses seeking the death penalty for certain homosexual acts.

"There will be no death penalty at all... that will go," David Bahati, the legislator who formulated the bill, told AFP.

Bahati said he wanted to scrap proposals to punish "aggravated homosexuality," which includes someone deemed to be a "serial offender" with the death sentence.

When asked about the possibility of life sentences being imposed for certain acts, Museveni said they would only be considered for crimes "which are against the interests of society."

He added that a life-term could be handed out to anyone funding schemes which attempted to bribe children into becoming homosexual.

"Inducement, manipulation, using money which they collect from the west; that's what I would not like."

The MP reintroduced the contentious bill last Tuesday after lawmakers ran out of time to debate the measure last year and voted to pass it on to the new session of parliament.

Parliament officials said on Thursday that the bill — which US President Barack Obama has described as "odious" — had been re-introduced in its original form, which included the death penalty clause.

Bahati, however, said the proposed legislation was already in the process of being changed, following recommendations made during the last parliament.

Museveni told Obama and other Western leaders to be "very careful about black Africa" and warned them not to impose their views on his country.

"I don't eat fish because I call it snake, I don't eat chicken because I think if you eat chicken you will be unstable, I don't eat pigs — I don't eat many of those things you people eat but I keep this to myself," he reasoned.

The long-serving ruler argued "the normal way is to be heterosexual... but maybe there are some exceptions for some good scientific reasons," urging homosexuals to "just keep your own confidential sexual life to yourself".

Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, but the proposed bill has previously attracted heavy criticism for the harsh penalties it proposed.