By Paul Lewis
February 27, 1999
United Nations -- The Security Council voted Friday to wind up the U.N. peacekeeping operation in Angola, after the renewed outbreak of a civil war in December. But the council left the door open for a new peacekeeping mission if the fighting dies down and said the United Nations would continue its relief work there.
In a report to the council in January, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that "intensifying hostilities" between the forces of Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and Jonas Savimbi's UNITA rebel movement had ended any hope of carrying out the 1994 Lusaka peace agreement. Annan recommended ending the peacekeeping operation, which has cost $4 billion.
The Angolan government had also been pressing for the departure of the 1,000 peacekeepers, accusing them of failing to disarm the rebels under the terms of the Lusaka accord. But some diplomats say dos Santos wants full-scale warfare to resume, convinced that he can finish off his UNITA enemies.
In a statement here Friday, the United States emphasized that it wanted the United Nations to remain involved in Angola, even if the peacekeeping force is withdrawn. Saying the organization cannot "abandon the Angolan people at this critical moment," the United States noted the Security Council's readiness to support "a future United Nations presence in Angola" and called for "the successful conclusion of consultations with the government of Angola regarding this presence."
The decision to close the operation was made at the end of a bad week for U.N. peacekeeping. On Thursday, China vetoed a resolution to extend the peacekeeping operation along Macedonia's borders with Albania and the Kosovo province of Yugoslavia. The United States had hoped to persuade China to reverse its decision by this weekend. But most Security Council members now consider that quite unlikely, and the 1,100-member force, which includes 350 U.S. soldiers, will stop Sunday. The United States and other council members now say they want to retain a peacekeeping force in the region, even if the United Nations no longer sponsors it.
Closing the Angolan and Macedonian operations will accelerate the decline in number and scope of global peacekeeping operations. After peaking at 78,744 in July 1993, the number of U.N. peacekeeping troops in the field has fallen to just over 14,000. The total will decline an additional 2,000 after the Angolan and Macedonian operations end.
