PRESIDENT Jose Eduardo dos Santos has declared his support for Pierre Falcone, the man accused by the French authorities of having organised illegal arms shipments to Angola, saying the Frenchman had helped “safeguard democracy” in the war-torn southern African country.
Dos Santos, speaking for the first time on the controversial arms deal in which Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the son of the late French president, is also implicated, said the weapons had been used in the fight against Unita rebels and had helped “save the lives of thousands of Angolans.”
The Angolan president said his government had entered a contract to purchase weapons from a company, ZTS, also known as SOS, “which is not really a French company.”
He gave no other details of the company, but stressed that Angola, “has never bought weapons in France.”
“Mr Falcone, for example, through his company, supported Angola in a crucial moment in its history. And thanks to this support, democracy was preserved. Thousands of people were saved from possible genocide,” Dos Santos said. “We freed our cities [from the hands of the rebels], and from bombardments […] which were causing despair.”
Falcone, Dos Santos added, “helped us to deal with sensitive problems with the consent of the French authorities and which were of great help to Angola.”
“We interpreted his actions as a gesture of confidence and friendship of the French state. This is why my government made decisions which have allowed the spectacular growth in cooperation [between Angola and France] in the fields of economics and finance.”
The Angolan president accused “certain agents of the French state” of waging a “smear campaign” against Angola. He appealed to the French authorities to take the initiative to save the relationship between the two states.
French judges are currently investigating arms sales to Angola, with enquiries focusing on Brenco France, the arms trading company headed by Falcone, who is in prison facing possible criminal charges.
Falcone is suspected of having organised shipments of arms to Angola worth $500m in 1993 and 1994, with the aid of Mitterrand, who is also under investigation in the affair.
Since independence in 1975, Angola has been devastated by a civil war, which is still being waged by hardline elements of Jonas Savimbi’s National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita). – AFP