DATE=3/17/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=SAF / ANGOLA (L ONLY)
NUMBER=2-260281
BYLINE=ALEX BELIDA
DATELINE=JOHANNESBURG
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: One of the mysteries in this week's
controversial United Nations report on Angola
sanctions violations involves a visit to South Africa
last year by a top leader of the UNITA rebel movement.
V-O-A Johannesburg Correspondent Alex Belida has been
asking government officials and Angola experts in
South Africa about the previously undisclosed trip and
has this report.
TEXT: The U-N report contains what can only be
described as a startling admission from the South
African government. A top Angolan rebel official --
UNITA Vice President, General Antonio Dembo -- visited
South Africa last year. This was at a time when
international sanctions technically barred senior
members of the rebel group from travelling abroad.
The U-N report says South Africa has told the
sanctions committee that General Dembo was not on
official business and that he was not a formal guest
of the government.
But there has so far been no South African
explanation as to why he was allowed into the country.
The U-N report itself links the visit, in August of
last year, to the alleged purchase of anti-aircraft
weapons -- a transaction that South African officials
deny and which the report itself admits was never
completed.
But Angola analysts believe the Dembo trip may have
been part of a secret South African effort to revive
peace talks between the rebels and the government in
Luanda.
No one in the South African government -- from the
president's office, to the Department of Foreign
Affairs, to the National Intelligence Agency -- has so
far been willing to discuss the visit or claims by
senior UNITA officials, cited in the U-N report, that
they were received by South African officials after
the imposition of sanctions prohibiting such contacts.
Similarly, there has been no official comment on the
claim in the U-N report that South African nationals
with what are termed "political connections" were
received by the rebels themselves last year in UNITA-
held territory in Angola.
However analysts say such contacts would not be
inconsistent with South Africa's belief that the
Angolan conflict cannot be solved militarily or
through the imposition of sanctions, but rather only
through the resumption of a peaceful dialogue between
the rebels and the Luanda government.
Angolan authorities have soundly criticized South
Africa for promoting this view. They are pressing for
UNITA's military defeat in what they have dubbed the
final war for peace.
However, top figures in Angola's ruling party, the M-
P-L-A or Popular Movement for the Liberation of
Angola, have visited South Africa repeatedly during
the past year to confer with senior government and
African National Congress party officials. Analysts
now believe these talks were linked to a secret South
African mediating effort.
/// REST OPT ///
Commentators are calling on South African authorities
to bring the initiative, if it exists, out of the
closet. Peter Fabricius, foreign editor of the
Johannesburg Star newspaper, says in a column (Friday)
that as long as such diplomacy remains clandestine, it
will, in his words, "breed the kind of suspicion" that
can be read between the lines of the U-N report. He
says continued secrecy also runs the risk of creating
what he terms a "lingering association" between South
African officials and the leaders of other African
countries accused in the U-N document of profiting
from contacts with UNITA. (Signed)
NEB/BEL/JWH/JP
17-Mar-2000 10:32 AM EDT (17-Mar-2000 1532 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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