MANUEL MUANZA, Luanda | Wednesday
ANGOLAN President Jose Eduardo dos Santos renewed his calls on Tuesday for rebel chief Jonas Savimbi to end his nation’s civil war, as army forces toppled a 10-year-old rebel stronghold.
Dos Santos, who spoke while on a two-day trip to Brussels, said Savimbi “has not yet said whether he really wants peace or war.” “It’s essential that Mr. Savimbi solemnly renounces war as a solution to problems, that he accept that his party is stripped of its military forces, and that he stop all military activity,” Don Santos told a news conference.
The president spoke as radio reports in Luanda said the army had successfully dislodged Savimbi’s forces from the strategic town of Buengas, which rebels had controlled for 10 years.
Hidden by forests and by savannahs, Buengas sits on a triangle of land carved out by the Cuilo, Buenga and Caule rivers in the northern province of Uije.
Until now, it had played a key role in the rebel’s northern operations, and its easily defended location had helped the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) fend off government attacks.
But the Roman Catholic radio network Ecclesia reported on Tuesday that the army had forced Unita out of Buengas, less than a week after the government said it had captured the towns of Cuilo, Cambulo and Lubalo in the mineral-rich province of Lunda-Norte, 1,000 kilometres northeast of Luanda.
For their part, Unita said on Tuesday that 108 people had died among the government forces in battles between June 12 and 15, including 78 soldiers, 23 government militia members, and seven police.
The killings came during a series of attacks, including a mortar attack on the military headquarters in the town of Kuito, 700 kilometres south of Luanda, Unita said in the statement signed by its General Abreu Kamorteiro.
Unita also said it had seized Jamba-Yanganji in Bie province on June 15 and the diamond-rich town of Kaissesse in Lunda-Norte province on June 14. AKM rifles, RPG-7 rocket launchers and munitions were seized from the army during the attacks, the rebels said.
The latest round of tit-for-tat attacks comes at a time when government troops appear to have launched a fresh offensive against Unita, after Savimbi’s rebels had intensified their own attacks on a number of fronts in recent weeks.
Savimbi acknowledged on June 3 that Unita troops had been routed by the Luanda army in conventional warfare in 1998, forcing the rebels to switch to guerrilla tactics.
The army launched a major offensive against Unita in 1998, after the rebels were widely blamed for the collapse of an internationally brokered peace deal signed in 1994.
In Brussels, Dos Santos reiterated his long-standing position that Savimbi must “recognize that validity of the Lusaka Accord and that he respect the laws and the institutions of the (Angolan) state.”
Savimbi had in May expressed in a letter to Roman Catholic bishops a willingness for dialogue with the government in Luanda. The rebels last week rejected government demands for a unilateral ceasefire as a precondition for a new round of peace talks. Angola’s civil war broke out in 1975 following 14 years of fighting against the country’s Portuguese colonial rulers.
At least 500,000 people have died, while four million people have been displaced, out of a total population of 12 million. – AFP
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FEATURES:
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