Lisbon | Sunday
A REPRESENTATIVE for Angola’s Unita rebels has called peace talks with the government were a sham and that the rebels holding them had been arrested, Lusa news agency said.
It cited representative Rui Oliveira saying General Abreu Kamorteiro, the commander of Unita forces, and two other rebel generals had been arrested last month.
He said the three were taken in by the government “just around the time” that Unita leader Jonas Savimbi was killed by Angolan government troops on February 22, the agency reported from Portugal, Angola’s former colonial power.
He did not give further details but a statement from Unita’s so-called external mission sent to AFP lashed out at the government in Luanda’s “use of prisoners of war to sign peace talks.”
The mission is made up of Unita members in exile and a statement from 46 Unita deputies on Friday said it was “the only credible body that can pursue contacts already begun through the United Nations with the aim of implementing the (1994) Lusaka peace protocol.”
The Lusaka peace accord signed in the Zambian capital has long been in tatters, and the United Nations imposed sanctions on Unita in October 1997 for its failure to respect it.
Oliveira added that Friday’s talks were a “show” and said three other Unita leaders, including the man once thought to be Savimbi’s successor, General Antonio Dembo, had disappeared.
“We have no contact with them,” the representative said. Dembo was reportedly killed in the same battle as Savimbi.
The Angolan presidency announced on Friday that the army and Unita rebels had agreed to end Africa’s longest-running conflict, which was started by Savimbi in 1975.
It said the agreement was reached during a meeting attended by military officials and Unita leaders in the village of Cassamba in Moxico, the eastern province where Savimbi was killed.
Angola’s government late on Wednesday had ordered its forces to halt attacks on Unita rebels as of Thursday, and said it was prepared to offer an amnesty to rebel fighters.
Friday’s announcement gave no indication when or where a formal ceasefire agreement could be signed. – AFP