OWN CORRESPONDENT, Luanda | Thursday 3.30pm.
SUPPORTERS of Jonas Savimbi, leader of Angola’s Unita rebel movement, have blamed the new split in the movement as the result of government maneouvring, and say it “will achieve nothing”.
Five influential Unita leaders, including Jorge Valentim, suspended hotels and tourism minister, and the suspended defence, interior and assistance and social reintegration ministers, declared on Wednesday that they are breaking with Savimbi and are committed to the 1994 Lusaka peace protocols which he hasto all intents and purposes abandoned.
General Horacio Junjuvili, a top Unita official with a position on a joint commission with government and United Nations representatives monitoring the tattered peace settlement, on Thursday dismissed the breakaway as a divisive tactic. But he conceded that seven district administrators in Uige province, historically a Unita stronghold, have thrown their weight behind the defectors.
In a manifesto, the splinter group said “the current leadership of Unita, under the direction of Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, has shown itself incapable of honouring the commitments freely undertaken in Lusaka.” The signatories included Savimbi rival Eugenio Manuvakola and several of the ministers suspended by the Angolan government earlier this week, in protest against Unita’s failure to meet the obligations imposed by the peace accords.
Levels of support for the splinter group are unknown.
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