January 4, 2002
United Nations Under-Secretary for Africa, Ibrahim Gambari, held talks in the United Stated last week with a senior UNITA official in an attempt to get the warring parties back to the negotiating table, diplomatic sources have confirmed to IRIN.
Gambari returned to New York after a week of intense talks in Angola in December with government, UNITA and civil society representatives. He subsequently told the Security Council during a briefing that a "window of opportunity" existed in Angolan to end the almost 30-year-old war between UNITA and the government.
He said the two had agreed to resume peace talks, on condition that certain aspects of the tattered 1994 Lusaka Peace Protocol could be renegotiated. The parties also wanted the church to play a facilitating role in the discussions, and had not objected to all sectors of civil society participating.
A diplomatic source told IRIN on Friday that Gambari's meeting with former UNITA representative to Washington, Jardo Muekalia, indicated "the urgency" with which all parties were approaching the resumption of peace talks.
In May Reverend Daniel Ntoni-Nzinga, executive secretary of the Inter-Ecclesial Committee for Peace in Angola (COIEPA) - which has been spearheading peace efforts - said the aim was to secure a ceasefire and to have UNITA, the government and civil society around the negotiating table by the end of 2001.
"Things are moving very quickly," the source said. No official statement was released after the Washington meeting. Gambari had told the Security Council during his briefing that the situation was fragile and that the UN would have to play its role with great caution.
Lusa reported on Thursday that Gambari told Muekalia that while the UN was ready to facilitate contact with Luanda, it would not yet end broad sanctions against UNITA.
The official news agency Angop on Thursday quoted ruling MPLA party secretary for information, Norberto dos Santos, as saying in response to the meeting that the "government awaits all initiatives towards peace in Angola, as long as they are in the framework of the Lusaka peace accord".
"We salute the meeting as long as it fits in the spirit of the government's initiative ... We are still saying that all this should be framed under what the government has established as rules to put the war to an end - the conclusion of tasks entrusted in the Lusaka accord," he added.
Meanwhile, the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) have denied capturing UNITA second-in-charge Paulo Lukamba "Gato" in Moxico. Their denial was prompted by media reports in Lisbon that FAA troops had captured or killed Gato and other senior rebels in an offensive in the eastern Moxico province.
"All the comments surrounding the capture of Lukamba Gato are nothing more than mere speculation. There is no justification for so much noise about something that never happened," an FAA source told Lusa.
In a separate development, according to Lusa, the state-controlled Jornal de Angola reported on Thursday that Angolan troops had captured 14 Congolese soldiers loyal to Kinshasa's late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. The Congolese soldiers, who would be repatriated, were captured last month in northern Uige province, where they allegedly were fighting alongside UNITA forces, the newspaper said, quoting a provincial military source.
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