SOS Is Heard From Missing U.N. Aircraft

U.N. workers in Angola have picked up an SOS from a U.N. plane that crashed near a war zone in the central highlands, raising hopes for survivors, a spokesman said Monday.

U.N. spokesman Hamadoun Toure said the United Nations is pressing the government and the rebel group UNITA to call a cease-fire and allow rescuers to reach the downed craft.

“This may be our last chance to rescue innocent U.N. peacekeepers,” Toure said by phone.

The C-130 aircraft with 14 people on board crashed Saturday near the city of Huambo, about 320 miles southeast of the capital, Luanda.

U.N. specialists cannot tell whether the SOS Morse code signals--identified as coming from the plane--are being sent manually or if they are just transmissions that trigger automatically in the event of a crash, Toure said.

The 10 passengers on board included three Angolans, two Russians, an Australian, an Egyptian, a Cameroonian, a Zambian and a Namibian. The crew was made up of a South African, an Angolan, a Bolivian and a Filipino.

Eight of the passengers were members of the U.N. Observer Mission in Angola, or MONUA, that was overseeing implementation of the country’s collapsed 1994 peace deal.

The government says that the plane was shot down by rebel forces and that it crashed in a UNITA-controlled area.

UNITA Secretary-General Paulo Lukamba Gato denied his troops shot at the plane and said he had no information about its location.

“We don’t know anything about it,” Gato said by satellite telephone. “There’s heavy fighting in all that area.”

Gato said that he had not received any U.N. request for safe passage to the area and that he could not comment on the request until it was presented directly to the UNITA leadership.

The plane was painted with the U.N. colors, and both the government army and rebels were informed of the flight’s schedule before the aircraft took off from Huambo.

In Washington, the State Department issued a statement offering its condolences and adding its call for a cease-fire to aid search crews. The State Department also called on both sides to provide security guarantees and support to the searchers.

“At this tragic moment, we call on both government authorities and UNITA to implement immediately a cease-fire [in the area] so that MONUA can complete search-and-rescue operations,” the State Department’s Lee McClenny said.

“We also call on the government forces and UNITA to provide security guarantees for MONUA’s search,” he said in a statement.

The U.N. observer mission, deployed to monitor the peace accord that halted a two-decade civil war between the rebels and the government, has been unable to stop the renewed fighting.

The main battles have focused on the central highland cities of Huambo and Kuito, 80 miles to the east, that provide a traditional power base for UNITA, a Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola.