Global Policy Forum

United Nations - The three nations overseeing the Angolan peace process will submit a draft resolution to the U.N. Security Council proposing steps intended to prevent a renewal of civil war, a diplomat said.

Experts from the United States, Russia and Portugal will submit the draft "as soon as possible" in hopes of salvaging the peace process in Angola, said Portuguese Ambassador Antonio Monteiro. The draft will incorporate measures against UNITA, the former rebel movement, unless the group fulfills commitments under a 1994 agreement between the group and the Angolan government, Monteiro said. Under the 1994 pact, UNITA a Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola agreed to hand back to the government the entire 50 percent of the country it seized during the civil war.

But implementation of terms of the agreement has been slow. The United Nations blames UNITA for most of the delays. Last October, the Security Council imposed air and travel sanctions against UNITA, in addition to an oil and weapons embargo in effect since 1993.

Monteiro said the three observer countries had agreed on the proposal, but he would not discuss them in detail before the draft resolution was circulated to the full 15-member council. "This is a very, very serious situation in Angola," Monteiro told reporters. "We want very much to save the peace process." The U.N. special representative to Angola briefed the council Friday on the much-delayed implementation of the 1994 Lusaka peace agreement between the government and UNITA.

Alioune Blondin Beye said earlier this week that UNITA was hiding armed men in remote areas of the vast southwest African nation, despite the movement's pledge that it demobilized its 70,000-strong guerrilla army. UNITA has denied the allegation.

Before the council meeting, diplomatic sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Beye will insist on new sanctions against UNITA if terms of the peace plan were not fulfilled. Paulo Lukamba Gato, UNITA's secretary-general, dismissed the council actions as part of "an international conspiracy" against the rebel movement.

Speaking by telephone from UNITA's central highland stronghold at Bailundo, he said Beye's report was "very dangerous" for the peace process because it could prompt the government to launch a military offensive. UNITA fought a civil war for nearly two decades against the government following Angola's 1975 independence from Portugal. An estimated 500,000 people died in the continent's longest civil war before the government and UNITA signed the 1994 peace accord.