OWN CORRESPONDENT, LUANDA | Tuesday
ANGOLAN rebel leader Jonas Savimbi on Monday welcomed the Catholic Church’s peace initiatives in the southwest African country and said that war was “absurd”.
“After the liberation war against the Portuguese I hoped for a quiet life,” Savimbi said in a letter faxed to Reuters. “But unfortunately it didn’t happen.”
“War is absurd,” he added. The fax’s authenticity could not be independently verified.
Savimbi has led the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) in its bush war against the formerly Marxist government in Luanda since independence from Portugal in 1975.
He broke 18 months of silence in March and called for peace talks with Luanda in an interview with the Voice of America.
Monday’s letter accused the government of violating the spirit of the 1994 Lusaka peace accords, a shaky peace pact which crumbled in 1998 amid renewed fighting. Unita had failed to properly dimilitarise, holding onto weapons caches and parts of Angola. After the rebel movement went back to war, some Unita members split away from the movement, criticising Savimbi.
But: “After Lusaka, did not the MPLA continue to seize cities and arrest and kill our people?” the letter asked.
“Being aware of the influence of the (Catholic) church in society, I have been following with great attention and welcome its initiatives,” the letter added.
“Today we all can talk about peace thanks to Unita,” the letter said. “So let’s join forces to reach this goal of peace for our people.”
Despite the letter, it appears Unita ambushed two cargo trucks in Malange city in central Angola, killing six people and wounding 32, aid workers in the city said on Monday.
One aid worker said the trucks were looted and burned in the attack last Friday. “I heard about the attack and I saw the wounded in the hospital,” another aid worker said by telephone.
The attack took place near Cacuso, some 270km east of the capital Luanda, and was blamed on the rebel Unita.
One survivor said two of his daughters and a niece were still missing after 60 passengers fled into the bush, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported on Monday.
The May 11 attack occurred at 11pm (2200 GMT) in a village called November 11, Angola’s independence day, said another aid worker.
It was the latest incident in a string of rebel attacks on the road linking the provincial capital with Luanda, the aid worker said.
Elsewhere, government forces killed “scores of terrorists” who attacked a town near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Angolan state newspaper reported on Monday. – Reuters
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