| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________Angola_______________
Bishop offers mediation
Peace pacts have repeatedly failed
A bishop in civil war-torn Angola has called for a cease-fire and offered the services of the Catholic Church as mediator in the conflict.
Bishop Francisco Moreira dos Santos of Uige, in northern Angola, told Reuters news service, “I think there should be a cease-fire; that is the only way. It should be bilateral and simultaneous. And it is urgent.” He added, “We have people capable of mediating.”
Angola, in southwestern Africa, has endured 26 years of civil war, which has left more than one million people dead. The main rebel group, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), led by its founder Jonas Savimbi, has waged a civil war against the Angolan government almost continuously since independence from Portugal in 1975. Savimbi has abandoned peace deals twice in the 1990s and returned to fighting.
Any cease-fire would be preceded by dialogue although the government has said it will not renegotiate the 1994 Lusaka Peace Accord, which calls for rebel disarmament, a joint military, government power sharing, and democratic elections. The 1994 Lusaka peace deal collapsed with renewed fighting in 1998.
Interior Minister Fernando da Piedade dos Santos expressed “an openness for dialogue” when he met Angola’s bishops last month in Luanda, and UNITA leader Savimbi asked for dialogue in a recent radio interview.
UNITA’s strength has been sapped in recent years by government victories and international sanctions on the diamond trade that has funded the rebels. “UNITA should consider how the war has divided its ranks, how the war has weakened it politically and strengthened the government, and how it has made the people suffer,” Bishop Moreira said.