By Barbara Crossette
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in one of the toughest and bleakest reports to emerge from his office, faults the Angolan government and the Unita rebel organization for destroying all hopes of peace in one of Africa's potentially richest countries.
The report, sent on Sunday to the Security Council, says that Angola is on the verge of a catastrophic breakdown, with malnutrition and disease rising as fighting spreads, leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians on the run from towns and villages under attack.
Annan said in the report that with the recent resumption of fighting "the conditions for a meaningful U.N. peacekeeping role ceased to exist."
"The events of the last few months have clearly demonstrated that, for all intents and purposes, the Angolan peace process has collapsed and the country is now in a state of war," Annan concluded.
Annan proposed appointing a New-York based special envoy for Angola. He noted that the United Nations has spent $1.5 billion on peacekeeping for Angola over the last four years. But he added that for the moment all that was left to do there was to remove safely 1,000 international monitors and aid workers and try to prevent the loss of millions of dollars in equipment.
The debacle takes its place on the growing roster of international missions that have failed because of standoffs between bitterly entrenched foes and because U.N. member governments have been unwilling to commit the huge military and economic resources necessary to take charge of developments.
The United Nations is facing similar intransigence in dealing with several other African conflicts, from the Horn of Africa to Congo, as well as in Afghanistan, where efforts to reconcile battling factions have been stymied.
Annan's report recommends closing the United Nations operation in Angola by March 20. It holds the rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi, responsible for setting off the latest round of fighting by ignoring the terms of a 1994 peace accord. But the report is also sharply critical of the government.
The government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has in recent weeks called for the complete isolation of Savimbi and the withdrawal of the United Nations so that fighting can resume uninterrupted, the report says. Similar threats to broaden attacks are being made by Unita, the Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola.
Both sides have been attacking civilian populations and sowing additional land mines in one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. More than 500,000 people have been driven from their houses in the last year, the report says.
Unita and the governing party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, have been fighting since 1975. That year the country became independent through a political revolution in Portugal, the colonial power in Angola. Until the end of the Cold War Unita had Western -- particularly American -- backing, and the Popular Movement was aided by the Soviet Union.
In recent years Russia, the United States and Portugal have been working collectively to foster peace efforts. Russia has 100 troops in Angola, Portugal 40 and the United States none.
The government, Annan wrote, has created a "negative public atmosphere" toward the United Nations. Its civilian police force and local self-defense militias act as adjuncts to the party-dominated national army, not as neutral enforcers of law or protectors of the population. Human rights work has become impossible in many places.
The low international price of oil, mismanagement by a one-party government and endless fighting have ruined the economy, U.N. officials say. Social indicators, in a country awash in diamonds and oil, are plummeting.
"The immediate effects of the war have been the increasing levels of malnutrition, especially among young children, and appalling sanitation and health conditions," the report says. "The risk of epidemics has grown dramatically, especially in the war-affected areas, where the number of vulnerable persons is increasing rapidly with little access to health care and medicines."
In some areas the population is already living off stockpiled food, with little hope of new U.N. deliveries, the secretary-general said, adding, "The humanitarian situation in Angola, already critical, has the potential to develop into a full-scale catastrophe."
