OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 4.00pm.
EFFORTS by United Nations special envoy Issa Diallo to meet with Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi are being thwarted by the government’s stated inability to guarantee his safety, leaving him effectively stalled in the capital, Luanda.
The country’s peace accords negotiated four years ago in Lusaka, Zambia, are threatened by Unita’s mounting a new military campaign. The latest reports of fighting come from the Lunda Norte and Malanje provinces, several hundred kilometers east of the capital.
Frustrated by Unita’s continuing intransigence, especially over the surrender of its last highland strongholds, the MPLA government has expelled Unita officials from its administration, saying it will deal only with a Unita breakaway faction that says Savimbi does not want peace.
But the UN Security Council insists that Savimbi be kept within the peace process.
The dissident faction has just had a boost from the further breakaway of six hundred Unita soldiers, among 1000 people who have left military camps in Cunene province and arrived in Kuveyali.
The breakaway committee’s founders include Unita’s former secretary-general Eugenio Manuvakola, who signed a peace pact with the Luanda government on the rebels’ behalf in 1994.
Ever reclusive and untrusting, Savimbi has for years refused to leave the bush to join aides and Unita politicians in Luanda. His movement, following its renewed campiagn, has had sanctions levelled against it by the UN.