Blantyre | Monday
ANGOLAN President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said on Sunday that his government has told the United Nations to renew contacts with his nation’s main rebel group with a view to resuming peace talks.
“We’re in contact with the secretary general of the UN,” Dos Santos said upon arriving in Malawi for a regional heads of state summit.
“We conveyed to him the message that it is now time for the UN to renew contact with the military wing of Unita so that we work to bring peace to Angola,” he said.
Dos Santos’s government late last year gave the green light to the United Nations to resuming official contacts with the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita).
But his statement on Sunday was the first time he has publicly called on the world body to reach out to the rebels.
Less than a month ago, on December 18, dos Santos said that Unita’s leader, Jonas Savimbi, faced only three possible fates: surrender, capture or death.
“There are three possible scenarios: either he gives up his arms and hands them over to the UN, or he will be captured by our soldiers, or he will be killed in combat,” he said.
If Savimbi were to die, he should “blame himself” because that would mean that he had “refused to make peace,” Dos Santos added in his December statement.
The war in Angola is among the conflicts set to be discussed on Monday by heads of state attending a special summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Angola’s government has broken off all formal contacts with Unita’s military arm. Savimbi and Unita are internationally blamed for dragging out the country’s 26-year civil war. – AFP