Angola Peace Unraveling, U.S. and U.N. Officials Fear

Angola’s 1994 peace accord, in which the United States played a major role as negotiator and guarantor, appears to be on the verge of collapse, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.

“The peace is not dead but it’s close,” a U.S. official said.

Mounting tensions have erupted into open clashes between factions loyal to the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and those loyal to the former UNITA rebels, the officials said. One unconfirmed diplomatic report says two northern towns may have fallen recently to forces of UNITA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola.

The danger is that the new fighting will reignite the two-decade civil war, especially in view of a military buildup in the rich diamond and mineral areas of the northeast and the spread of tensions to central and southern Angola.

The Clinton administration is particularly concerned by the growing number of desertions among UNITA troops who had been integrated into a restructured Angolan army.

In an attempt to help defuse the crisis, Washington is planning to host an Angolan government delegation the first week of August after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright returns from an annual Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations conference in Malaysia.

The United States has intervened in Angola for more than two decades. It was a major backer of the UNITA rebels in their war against the government, which was supported by Cuba and the former Soviet Union. Over the past three years, the U.S. has worked with both sides to implement the U.N.-brokered accord.

The crisis has reached the point that the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday threatened to impose new trade and travel restrictions on UNITA for destabilizing actions.

The long-volatile political climate has deteriorated over the past two months, partly because of the political upheaval in neighboring Congo, until recently called Zaire, where former President Mobutu Sese Seko was a long-standing backer of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi. UNITA has scrambled to build an airstrip near its traditional southern headquarters to provide a direct route for military equipment and other supplies once channeled through Zaire, according to U.S. officials.

Savimbi’s refusal to show up in Luanda, the capital, for long-overdue talks with Dos Santos and flagrant violations against U.N. observers, including the three-day detention this month of U.N. troops dispatched to investigate UNITA’s involvement in the recent violence, have led to growing speculation that he intends again to carve out his own sector within Angola.

UNITA has claimed to control at least 40% of Angola’s territory.

Until late spring, the United States had been pleased with the expansion of government control over a growing number of “administrative areas” that had once been war-torn parts of Angola or UNITA-held territory. But that too has virtually ceased, the officials said. The peace first began to crumble during May fighting between former rebels and government forces around Lunda Norte province in the northeast.

The Security Council this week called for UNITA to take “irreversible and concrete steps immediately to fulfill its obligations,” including three specific actions to get the peace accord back on track. Among them, demilitarizing its rebel forces, cooperating with government expansion and transforming its radio station into a nonpartisan media outlet.

Information supplied by UNITA on its troop strength and the activities of its radio station also have been rejected recently as inadequate or inaccurate.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been asked to report back to the Security Council by Aug. 15, when new sanctions will be considered. The U.N. effort to bring peace to Angola had cost about $1 million a day to support troops and staff until the world body decided last month to replace peacekeepers with unarmed observers.

Savimbi has been under a limited arms and oil embargo since 1993.

Under the terms of the peace accords, Savimbi has a government-paid position as Angola’s official opposition. But he has refused to go to Luanda and failed to stay within the parameters of the job description or to live up to pledges this year to demilitarize troops--the most recent promise having been made last month, according to the U.S. and U.N. officials.