OWN CORRESPONDENT, Luanda | Saturday 6.00pm.
ZAMBIA denied on Saturday that it had put its troops on high alert along the border with Angola in anticipation of Angolan soldiers chasing UNITA rebels across the frontier.
Government chief spokesman and Information Minister Newstead Zimba and Defence Minister Chitalu Sampa both issued separate statements denying that the army had massed troops along the western border.
“The report is totally false and baseless. The government position is well-known and cannot be over-emphasised, Zambia’s foreign policy is that of brokering peace,” said Zimba in a statement.
Sampa told state radio that Zambia had no intention of engaging in any military struggle with its neighbour.
He dismissed the reports, saying they were the work of people with malicious agendas trying to discredit Zambia and its people as warmongers.
Sampa further said Zambia and Angola had resolved all their differences.
Zimba said Zambia could not support or fight alongside UNITA because that would be in total violation of UN sanctions.
Foreign diplomats and military sources in Zambia on Friday nevertheless confirmed the reports from Angolan military sources that extra Zambian troops had massed on a stretch of the border to stop Angolan soldiers crossing and to manage the swelling flood of Angolan refugees fleeing the bloody 25-year conflict.
Military sources confirmed to AFP that some soldiers have been sent to the Angolan border to monitor the influx of refugees from that country because most of the refugees were armed and it was the duty of the country’s army to screen them.
The Angolan government has repeatedly accused Zambia of helping guerrillas of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) rebels with supplies of food, arms and petrol.
A team of UN experts visited Zambia last month to probe charges by Luanda that UNITA rebels were receiving arms and financial support from individuals in Lusaka, including former defence and commerce ministers, Ben Mwila and Enock Kavindele, in defiance of a UN embargo.
Luanda suspects Zambians living on the border of helping the rebels, who often come from the same ethnic group. Foreign diplomats report that the rebels regularly cross over into Zambia, where they trade in light weapons for the food they badly need.
Zambians use UNITA’s old weapons in local bandit attacks, the diplomats claim.
Angola plunged back into all-out civil war early last year when Luanda decided to seek to wipe out the rebels militarily after the collapse of the last UN-mediated bid to end a war which has claimed at least 1.2 million lives and left the country strewn with landmines. — AFP
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