Angolans Sign Treaty Ending 16-Year War : Africa: Opposing factions will lay down arms and take up ballots. Their pact is a landmark of U.S.-Soviet cooperation.

Ending a 16-year civil war that took more than 300,000 lives and ravaged their country’s economy, the leaders of Angola’s two major factions signed a peace agreement Friday that commits them to lay down their arms and compete in multi-party elections.

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi both hailed the agreement, the product of a decade of negotiations sponsored by the United States, the Soviet Union and Portugal, as the beginning of a new and hopeful era for their country.

The pact was also a landmark of cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union, which worked together for the agreement after supporting the opposing sides in the war.

“The Angolan people can now face the future with confidence and optimism,” said Dos Santos, whose leftist government failed to defeat the rebels despite the support of 50,000 Cuban troops.

“God will help the Angolan people . . . to pardon the past and to forget, because we are one single people,” declared Savimbi, whose National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) was bolstered by aid from South Africa and the United States.

The two men hesitated for a long moment as photographers at the ceremony shouted to them to shake hands, but finally Dos Santos reached out across the green felt-covered table and Savimbi responded with a firm grip.

Church bells rang out, and Angolan exiles danced and beat drums in the streets of Lisbon, the capital of the country that ruled Angola as a colony for nearly five centuries.

The peace agreement includes an immediate cease-fire, an end to all foreign military aid to either side and the establishment of politically neutral police and armed forces. A joint commission with members from both the government and the rebels, with U.S. and other foreign observers, is supposed to implement the agreement.

Both sides agree that will not be easy. “It is not sufficient for the seeds to sprout,” Dos Santos said. “We must know how to care for the tree. . . . We must now apply this peace agreement.”

A provisional cease-fire has been in effect for two weeks, and the last Cuban military advisers left Angola last Saturday. But foreign officials say that the sprawling country on southwest Africa’s Atlantic coast is awash in both weapons and local enmities.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh, who witnessed the signing, both made a point of saying they would keep their part of the bargain by cutting off all military aid immediately. A State Department official said the United States will monitor Soviet compliance with the accord through intelligence satellites and other means, but added, “We don’t expect any problems.”

However, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Herman Cohen, said the Bush Administration plans to continue giving non-military aid to UNITA to help Savimbi’s organization function during the period before the elections, which are scheduled to be held between September and November, 1992.

“They have a lot of responsibilities to fulfill under the agreement,” Cohen explained. “They have to open 18 offices around the country, one in every province, to help implement the agreement. That’s going to cost a lot of money.” He said the aid would not be used to support Savimbi in an election campaign.

Both Dos Santos and Savimbi were transformed from military leaders into presumed presidential candidates by the agreement--but Savimbi’s backers got the jump on the government by erecting huge posters of their leader in Lisbon, including one across the street from the hotel where Dos Santos was staying.

Cohen said Savimbi may have the edge in Angola as well. “He has the advantage of being a guy confronting the people who have mismanaged the country for 15 years,” he said.

“One of our concerns is making sure that other political parties besides UNITA and the MPLA have the right to organize,” he added.

Dos Santos, a relative moderate in the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, used the accord-signing ceremony to renew his commitment to reform the economy in government-controlled areas from ramshackle Soviet-style socialism to a less-regulated market system.

“We are committed to peace, democracy and a market economy,” he said.

The brief ceremony, at the Portuguese Foreign Ministry’s elegant 18th-Century Necessidades Palace, was also attended by U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, chairman of the Organization of African Unity, whose organizations will also help implement the accord.

Baker told the audience that the Angolans “have shown the world that peace can be established through dialogue and political will.” He made a point of thanking the Soviet Union “for their cooperation in resolving yet another issue that once deeply divided our countries but that now unites us in common purpose.”

Bessmertnykh credited “the new relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States” for the accord, which he called “a solid contribution toward building a new world order.”

The accord was in part a long-delayed success for the Administration of Ronald Reagan, which worked for eight years to push the two sides toward a peaceful settlement. Chester A. Crocker, Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs who suffered criticism from both Republicans and Democrats as he pursued an Angolan deal, was present at the ceremony as a guest of the U.S. delegation.

Angola’s civil war began in the struggle against Portuguese colonialism, as several different ethnic and regional leaders raised separate guerrilla armies. After Portugal withdrew from Angola in 1975, the factions turned on each other--and turned to the superpowers for help.

The Soviet Union and Cuba backed the Marxist MPLA, which held the capital of Luanda; the United States and South Africa aided UNITA and others. Congress cut off U.S. aid to UNITA in 1976 but eventually restored it in 1986.

As the war seesawed, Crocker pursued a solution he first proposed in 1981: a four-way agreement under which Cuba would withdraw its troops from Angola, South Africa would grant independence to neighboring Namibia, and the two Angolan factions would agree to hold elections.

It took almost seven years of war--including major battles between South African forces and Cuban troops inside Angola--to convince both sides that military victory was impossible. Angola, Cuba and South Africa agreed on a settlement based on Crocker’s ideas in 1988.

It has taken three years more to achieve a final agreement.