Global Policy Forum

By Karen DeYoung

Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos yesterday repeated his call for a cease-fire in his country's 27-year civil war and said the government's military commanders should then negotiate the next steps with the rebel group UNITA.

"What we need first is contacts" between the two warring forces, dos Santos said in an interview here after two days of meetings with Bush administration officials. He said those contacts should be followed by a return to the steps outlined in the 1994 Lusaka accords, which were intended, but failed, to end Angola's civil war.

Dos Santos's long-scheduled trip here coincided with the death Friday of Jonas Savimbi, leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, who was killed in an ambush by government soldiers. Savimbi's demise is widely seen as providing the best opportunity for peace since the 1994 agreement. Dos Santos said an agreement would "never have been possible" while Savimbi was alive. President Bush said he urged dos Santos on Tuesday "to move quickly toward achieving a cease-fire."

"President dos Santos has it within his power to end 26 years of fighting by reaching out to all Angolans willing to lay down their arms," Bush said. Dos Santos, who also met with Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said that although the administration "didn't define any specific idea" on how to achieve peace, he believed the United States was "interested in working within the framework of the troika -- Russia, Portugal and the United States," which oversaw negotiations leading to the Lusaka agreement.

Although it was quickly violated by all sides, the agreement called for a cease-fire and integration of UNITA forces into the government military and police. An estimated half-million Angolans have died in the war, which began as an ideological battle following independence from Portugal in 1975. As the larger powers backing each side withdrew from Cold War involvement -- the Soviet Union and Cuba from dos Santos's then-Marxist MPLA, and South Africa and the United States from UNITA -- the war became purely a fight for power, and for control of Angola's considerable natural resources.

Chief among those resources are oil deposits rivaling those of Saudi Arabia. But despite investment by major U.S. and other oil companies, oil income has brought little or no benefit to the majority of Angola's 13 million people. Dos Santos has blamed the war for Angola's economic difficulties and asked for international assistance. But the country has not qualified for relief from its $10 billion debt because the government has not convinced the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank that it has resolved the mismanagement that they say created the debt.

The IMF halted a program with Angola last year, saying it was unable to determine how much money the government was receiving from the oil companies. Yesterday, dos Santos accused the IMF of imposing more stringent requirements on Angola than on other African countries. "Ours is not the worst," he said. "Others have had aid from the IMF. We just have criticism and condemnation." Dos Santos said he requested that the Bush administration provide "technical assistance to carry out economic reforms" as well as some help in Angola's discussions with the IMF.

In a speech to Angolan and U.S. business leaders Tuesday night, he said Angola "supports the United States in its war on terrorism." He also said he hoped to increase Angola's share of U.S. oil imports -- currently 5 percent -- "in the very near future." Dos Santos said that as a non-OPEC country, Angola wants "to work with the U.S. to contribute to its energy security."

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