10 Captured Angolan Rebels Accept Seats in Parliament

Ten captured UNITA rebels accepted seats in Parliament on Wednesday, and hundreds of government and guerrilla troops poured into a key battle that has claimed an estimated 10,000 lives.

The breakaway dissidents were the first rebels to join Parliament since UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi rejected the results of multi-party elections last September.

The new Parliament members, captured when fighting broke out in October, said they represent a legitimate rebel faction that opposes the bellicose stand of the UNITA leadership, according to a Luanda-based diplomat who attended Wednesday’s session.

Marcos Samondo, U.N. representative for UNITA, has complained to the United Nations that the dissidents agreed to join Parliament only after months of physical and mental torture.

Carlos Morgado, Savimbi’s former physician, told Parliament his renegade group demands that UNITA accept a cease-fire in the deadly battle for Huambo and resume peace talks, the diplomat said. Both sides are sending reinforcements to Huambo.

UNITA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, refused its 70 seats in the 220-member Parliament after the ruling MPLA, Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, won a majority of seats in September’s elections.

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos led Savimbi in the first round of presidential voting.

The elections were to have cemented a 1991 peace accord ending 16 years of civil war that broke out on the eve of independence from Portugal.

U.N. observers judged the elections generally free and fair, but Savimbi called them fraudulent and the war resumed soon after.

Battles have been especially bloody around Huambo, the rebels’ central highlands stronghold 330 miles southeast of Luanda.