LUANDA – MEMBERS of Angola’s Unita rebel movement in Luanda and in Europe gave their nods on Tuesday to peace talks under way in the eastern town of Luena, bolstering hopes for a ceasefire in Africa’s longest-running war.
Since Unita’s founder and leader Jonas Savimbi was killed in battle on February 22, the rebels have spoken with many voices from different locations.
Now a growing consensus seems to agree the talks are
legitimate, despite concerns that people representing Unita might have be held prisoner by the army.
”At the outset, we had the impression the negotiations were just a show,” Isaias Samakuva, a top official in Europe of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) told the
Portuguese daily Diario Economico in an interview.
”But the Unita secretary general told me the negotiations were
now being conducted in earnest,” Samakuva said, stating that he had on Monday spoken at length by telephone with General Paulo Lukamba,
alias ”Gato”, who is currently the de facto head of the rebel
movement.
Meanwhile in Luanda, 56 Unita lawmakers said in a statement that
they recognised the peace talks under way Luena.
The parliamentarians said Gato was leading a ”managing
commission” that was empowered to negotiate with President Jose
Eduardo dos Santos’ government.
Among those MPs, 46 were named on March 15 to Samakuva’s
”foreign affairs mission,” which was charged with holding talks
with the government, through the United Nations, on reaching a
ceasefire deal.
”The foreign affairs mission has also recognised that the
managing commission is leading the talks in Moxico,” the province
where Luena is located, said MP Jose Domingos.
Savimbi was killed by Angolan army troops in an ambush on
February 22. His second in command, General Antonio Dembo, has not
been seen since Savimbi’s death, and many believe him to be dead,
leaving Lukamba as the rebels’ most senior representative.
Samakuva, who is based in Portugal, said Lukamba had assured him
he was ”doing everything in his power to ensure a lasting peace”.
He said the general would give a news conference at the weekend
on talks senior Unita officials are currently holding with
government representatives in Angola’s eastern Moxico province.
The deputy chief of staff of the Angolan armed forces, General
Geraldo Nunda, has been engaged since March 15 in peace talks with
Lukamba; Unita’s military commander, General Abreu Kamorteio; its foreign affairs representative, Alcides Sakala; and its information
representative Marcial Ndachala.
But it has been impossible to tell from television footage of
the talks whether the rebel leaders are free to move and talk as
they wish or whether they are army prisoners.
A representative of Unita based abroad announced on March 20
that Lukamba and two other senior rebel officials had been taken
prisoner by the army.
But Unita politician Daniel Domingos said on Saturday he did not
believe this was the case.
According to the most conservative estimates, more than 500 000 people have died in Angola’s civil war, which followed a 14-year
war of independence against Portugal, and more than one third of
the nation’s 12-million people have been displaced.
The war, which exploded in 1975 between groups that had
previously fought to oust the Portuguese, has also devastated
Angola’s vast natural resources and littered its farmland with
landmines. – Sapa-AFP