Renewed Heavy Fighting Dashes Hopes in Angola : Africa: Prospects for peace were short-lived. Foreign governments are losing patience with combatants.

The African nation of Angola, so close to burying the embers of its devastating 17-year civil war just four months ago, has been plunged into a full-scale resumption of the fighting, and few analysts expect an early cease-fire.

Battles between President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ government and Jonas Savimbi’s guerrilla forces have escalated sharply since November, claiming an estimated 10,000 civilian lives, threatening 1 million more people with starvation and severely battering what is left of the country’s infrastructure.

And the broad sense of national hope and goodwill, which bathed Angolans who went to the polls in their millions last September, has vanished, taking with it the patience of many foreign governments.

The prospects for a peaceful settlement in Angola, a mineral-rich country of 11 million people that is more than twice the size of California, have not been this poor in years. Even if the fighting ends soon, and there is no sign that it will, the failure of democratic elections to bring peace has left scars that will take years to heal.

Hard-liners on both sides have resisted several attempts by foreign diplomats and the United Nations to make peace. A six-point plan offered by American diplomats in December, and agreed to by both Savimbi and Dos Santos, lasted barely a week. Talks last month between the two sides in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, ended with only one firm agreement--to meet again this week. That meeting, scheduled for Thursday, was postponed indefinitely.

Dos Santos’ government and Savimbi’s UNITA guerrillas both share responsibility for the bloodshed. Savimbi resumed the fighting after refusing to accept his party’s defeat in an election deemed substantially “free and fair” by U.N. and international observers.

The government, caught largely unprepared for Savimbi’s return to the bush, armed vigilantes and encouraged them to respond, leading to a blood bath in the capital, Luanda.

The war is unwinnable, most analysts agree, and the overwhelming majority of Angolans are desperate for an end to the fighting. But that has not been enough to drive the leaders to a cease-fire. “There are just too many hard-liners on both sides,” one U.S. analyst said.

Analysts say the major obstacle is Savimbi, who has spent 30 of his 58 years leading guerrilla wars. He still appears to have his sights set on running Angola, although he lost almost all his international support by spurning the election results.

“Savimbi has been impervious to pressure for a long time,” the American analyst said. “Like most guerrilla leaders, he has his own agenda and he pursues it single-mindedly. The question now is whether he’s ready to settle for something less than ultimate power. And that’s something only he knows.”

Savimbi’s party, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), has made significant military gains in recent weeks, seizing, by some estimates, 70% of the country. His troops managed to destroy the main water pumping station for Luanda, cutting off supplies for the capital of 1.5 million. And they overran Soyo, a key city that controls a large number of the offshore oil wells that pump $3 billion a year into the government’s coffers.

Now, UNITA and Dos Santos’ army are locked in a battle for Huambo, a provincial capital that has little strategic value but great psychological importance as Savimbi’s hometown. Thousands are said to have died in its streets; the city, already shell-pocked by the long civil war, is crumbling.

Before the September elections, the United States had promised to recognize any government that came to power in free, fair elections. Dos Santos’ party, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), won a decisive victory in the parliamentary elections. And although Dos Santos led Savimbi in the presidential race, the president fell just short of the more than 50% vote he needed to win outright.

A presidential runoff still needs to be held, and American diplomats say the United States is likely to withhold recognition of the new government until the election process is complete. No date has been set for the runoff.

Even if a cease-fire is reached, analysts say it will be months before the country will be ready for a presidential runoff. And they believe that Savimbi, who until 1991 received substantial covert aid from the United States, has ruined any hope he might have had of winning the runoff by refusing to accept his party’s defeat in the parliamentary elections.

Before the election, many Angolans believed that Savimbi had changed. He spoke of a “new culture of tolerance” in the country, and he promised to abide by the election results. But he also was convinced that he would win the vote.

As it became clear that UNITA was going down to defeat, Savimbi charged widespread fraud and intimidation. International observers and Angolan election officials investigated Savimbi’s charges but found little evidence of vote-rigging. Now, Savimbi’s credibility inside the country, except among die-hard UNITA supporters, has suffered a blow.

For 16 months, from May, 1991, until the elections, Angola had appeared on the verge of a new era. The 17-year war had ended between Dos Santos’ army, backed by Cuba and the former Soviet Union, and Savimbi’s guerrillas, supported by the American CIA and South Africa. That war, which killed more than 300,000 people, had followed another war, the 13-year struggle for independence from Portugal.

But several key elements of the peace accord were not fully implemented, partly because of the rush toward democratic elections but also because each side distrusted the other. Neither army was fully disarmed; the merger of the two fighting forces had just begun at election time.

Savimbi had hedged his bets, maintaining substantial stockpiles of weapons and ammunition. UNITA said the government also was hedging by forming a special anti-riot squad, apparently designed to protect the country if Savimbi refused to accept the election results.

At election time, UNITA was in a much stronger military position than the government. But with each passing week, the government’s military position grows stronger. And analysts say that UNITA, with a 35,000-member army, could never hope to fully control all the territory it has seized.

“Ultimately, time is definitely not on Savimbi’s side,” said Gerald J. Bender, a leading Angola expert and former director of the School of International Relations at USC. “Everybody thought he had enough arms stored for a couple of years. But, at the rate the war is escalating, it won’t last that long.”

Savimbi’s traditional arms sources--the United States and South Africa--have spurned him, although the Angolan government has accused rightists within the South African Defense Force of continuing to help UNITA.

Dos Santos, meanwhile, has indicated his desire to reconcile with UNITA, and diplomats present at the talks between the two sides in Ethiopia last month said it appeared the government was ready to make significant concessions. But, the diplomats say, UNITA is dragging its feet.

Bender predicts that each side has at least one more military surprise to spring before they will be ready to negotiate.