Associated Press
CNN InteractiveJanuary 19, 2000
Lisbon, Portugal -- Angola's UNITA rebel group on Wednesday denied that it shot down two U.N. aircraft, saying former rebels fabricated the claim to please the government.
In taped interviews shown to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday by Canadian Ambassador Robert Fowler, two rebel defectors said their former leader -- Jonas Savimbi -- ordered the downing of the U.N. planes on Dec. 26, 1998 and Jan. 2, 1999.
Carlos Morgado, a UNITA official based in Lisbon, insisted the group had no part in the downing of the planes, which were carrying 23 people. The fate of the crew remains unclear. Morgado said the rebel defectors, now members of the Angolan army, made the allegations merely to please the Angolan government. "Whoever deserts or is captured ... of course they are going to say whatever the (government) wants to hear," he said Wednesday.
Morgado accused Fowler, who heads a U.N. sanctions committee on UNITA, of ignoring reported government atrocities in the war.
The fighting, which first erupted after Angola's 1975 independence from Portugal, has rendered much of the southwest African country inaccessible and has made it difficult to investigate conflicting claims.
The United Nations blames UNITA -- a Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola -- for the collapse of a 1994 peace deal. Fighting resumed in December 1998.
The United Nations has an arms and fuel embargo on UNITA and a ban on rebel diamond exports, which are estimated to have supplied the rebels with up to $4 billion since 1992. The rebel defectors said UNITA sold diamonds to international arms dealers for all types of weapons.
Morgado acknowledged that UNITA was using diamonds to pay for its war effort, but claimed much of the revenue went to providing humanitarian aid for people.
