U.N. Mediator in Angola Talks Feared Dead in Plane Crash

A small chartered plane that disappeared while carrying the U.N. special representative to Angola crashed into a swamp as it approached the airport in Abidjan, officials said Saturday. There were no signs of survivors.

The plane carrying Alioune Blondin Beye, a highly respected politician, diplomat and scholar from the West African nation of Mali, had left from Lome, Togo, on Friday night. Beye, 59, had met with Togolese President Gnassigbe Eyadema in an effort to win support for the peace process in Angola, according to a statement from the U.N. observer mission in that southern African country.

While rescuers have been unable to reach the wreckage of the Beechcraft 200 because of the terrain, the aircraft was spotted from a helicopter a few miles from the small town of Akoure, about 20 miles from the Ivorian commercial capital of Abidjan.

The control tower in Abidjan lost contact with the plane Friday night about 8 p.m., the U.N. mission said. Eight people, including two crew members, were aboard, it said.

But Togolese Foreign Minister Koffi Panou said in Lome that the plane had been carrying seven people, including three crew members.

There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.

Beye has been traveling through Africa to gather support for the troubled peace process in Angola.

Lingering hostility between the government and the former rebels of UNITA, or the National Union for the Independence of Angola, has stymied implementation of a peace pact mediated by Beye in 1994. The plan is running more than a year behind schedule, and the U.N’s patience is growing thin.

U.N. Secretary-General Koffi Annan, who expressed deep grief about Beye’s apparent death, appealed to the negotiators in Angola to “continue to cooperate closely with the United Nations to bring the peace process to the earliest conclusion.”

The U.N. Security Council agreed Wednesday to give UNITA five more days to comply with terms of the peace plan. Otherwise, the U.N. Security Council will freeze UNITA’s foreign bank accounts and ban its diamond exports.