Ceasefire Accord Signed to End Civil War in Angola

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, April 05, 2002

Ceasefire Accord Signed to End Civil War in Angola

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The heads of Angola's armed forces and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) rebel army signed a formal ceasefire agreement in Luanda Thursday, reviving implementation of the 1994 Lusaka Peace Protocol to end the country's nearly three decades of civil war.

After signing the document, Angolan chief of staff, General Armando da Cruz Neto, and his UNITA counterpart, General Geraldo Abreu Kamorteiro, shook hands and exchanged a long embrace to the applause of national and foreign dignitaries filling Luanda's parliament.

Under the accord, negotiated over two weeks in Luena in eastern Province of Moxico, the ceasefire took immediate effect, though in practice a truce has been in place since early March.

The ceasefire negotiations, aimed to resurrect the 1994 peace and power-sharing Lusaka protocol, which collapsed in 1998, began on March 15, three weeks after government troops killed UNITA former leader Jonas Savimbi in February.

Among other points, the bilateral "memorandum of understanding" stipulates that some 50,000 rebel fighters and an estimated 300, 000 family members will begin assembling on Friday at 27 confinement camps across the country.

More than 5,000 rebels officers and troops are to be integrated into the national armed forces, while the remainder will get professional training for "reinsertion" into civilian life.

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos promised elections as soon as possible in an address to the nation on Wednesday night. He and UNITA interim leader, General Paulo Lukamba Gato, attended the ceremony in the Angolan parliament.

As "witnesses" to the accord, the document was also signed by United Nations Undersecretary-General Ibrahim Gambari and the ambassadors of Portugal, the United States and Russia, the so- called "troika" of peace monitors set up under the UN-brokered Lusaka agreement.

The UN will be overseeing implementation of the accord in the first phase to dismantle the UNITA army, which has fought the Angolan government for 27 years.

The oil-and-diamond-rich nation has been at war for four decades. A 13-year struggle against Portuguese colonial rule turned into civil war upon independence in 1975.

Three previous peace accords brought brief respites from the war that humanitarian agencies estimate has killed one million people and uprooted 4.2 million, one third of the Angola's population.

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Angolan Government, UNITA Sign Ceasefire Agreement