Global Policy Forum

By Priscilla Cheung

The Security Council needs to tighten sanctions against the UNITA rebels in Angola, who have stepped up violence and launched attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians in recent months, a senior U.N. official said.

At a council meeting on Angola's 25-year civil war, U.N. Undersecretary-General Ibrahim Gambari said Thursday the rebels were "primarily responsible for continuing the conflict.

"Therefore, the Security Council has the responsibility to tighten its own sanctions imposed against the UNITA" to force the rebels "to abandon violence and embrace the peace process," said Gambari, the special adviser on Angola to Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In an official statement read at the meeting, the Security Council reaffirmed its intention "to keep sanctions under close and ongoing monitoring with a view to improving their effectiveness."

It also urged member states to "comply fully with the implementation of the sanctions regime."

In 1998, the council imposed a ban on rebel diamond exports that were helping to finance the conflict when a U.N.-brokered peace accord collapsed. Five years earlier, the council imposed an arms and fuel embargo on UNITA.

However, many nations continue to violate the bans, and more than dlrs 350 million worth of diamonds are being smuggled out of Angola every year, an estimated 25 percent to 30 percent by the rebels, according to a U.N. report released in September.

At the meeting, diplomats agreed the council needed to better monitor the sanctions and tighten any loopholes. "The Security Council has to play its full part in Angola, in particular through sanctions, which remain the most appropriate instrument for leading UNITA to adherence to the (peace accord), by blunting its war machine," said Jean de Ruyt, Belgium's U.N. ambassador, who spoke on behalf of the European Union. "The European Union asks all countries in the world to respect unscrupulously these sanctions," said de Ruyt.

The U.N. report said rebel diamonds continue to flow to Belgium, the world's largest diamond trading center.

Angola's Foreign Minster Joao Bernardo said the sanctions had reduced the rebels' capacity to wage war and prompted some of them to give up arms and join the peace efforts. "My government favors keeping and tightening them until peace becomes irreversible in Angola," he said.

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who said last year he would no longer negotiate with rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, has softened his stance recently.

In the Angolan capital of Luanda, Roman Catholic Church leaders said after a meeting with dos Santos on Thursday that they were "very optimistic" about a possible end to the war.

The government and UNITA, a Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, began fighting after the country gained independence from Portugal in 1975. The conflict has left about 4 million people - one-third of the population - dependent on aid.

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