Military

DATE= 11/02/00

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=ANGOLA/U-S/OIL (L-O)

NUMBER=2-268753

BYLINE= ALEX BELIDA

DATELINE= WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: A senior State Department official has rejected charges that current U-S policy towards Angola is driven solely by American interest in acquiring Angolan oil. Correspondent Alex Belida reports the rejection comes as Angola's UNITA rebels attack foreign oil facilities in a new twist to the country's long civil war.

TEXT: Once the United States backed Angola's UNITA rebel movement against the country's then Soviet and Cuban backed Marxist government. Now it supports the former Marxist leaders UNITA is still fighting.

The rebels say the shift is easy to explain: Angola's government controls the country's lucrative oil resources, in which U-S firms have invested billions of dollars. As long as it continues to get its oil, the rebels maintain the United States no longer cares about Angola's civil war.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Witney Schneidman rejects such charges. In a V-O-A interview at his office in Washington, Mr. Schneidman says such thinking reflects what he characterizes as an incomplete understanding of the U-S interest in Angola.

/// SCHNEIDMAN ACT ///

Oil is obviously a factor, but we have other interests in Angola and that concerns, number one, bringing this war to an end. Number two, working with all segments of Angolan society to help a viable democracy emerge with interest in economic reform. But we also have an interest in the role a vibrant and democratic Angola can play in the region of Southern Africa and what it can contribute to Southern Africa becoming one of the most attractive regional markets in the world.

/// END ACT ///

But charges of a shift in U-S policy persist. The influential "Economist" magazine recently ran an article about Angola titled "America's good new friend." It said new discoveries of deep offshore oil deposits would increase Angola's daily output from 850-thousand barrels to a million-and-a-half barrels a day by 2004.

The "Economist" predicts Angola will soon provide the United States with 10-percent of its oil imports. Other publications routinely credit Angola with already providing the United States with a significant seven-to-eight percent of its imports.

But V-O-A inquiries with the Department of Energy and the American Petroleum Institute paint a different picture.

These organizations say that last year U-S oil imports from Angola amounted to about three-percent of total imports. That is less than was imported from Iraq, a country with which the United States does not have diplomatic relations.

Industry experts say that with increased oil production in the future, U-S imports from Angola are likely to increase. But they say it is by no means certain.

In the meantime, though, the UNITA rebels appear to have reversed their previous pledge not to threaten oil facilities in Angola. In a military communique', the rebels say they have attacked and set on fire two oil pipelines near Soyo on Angola's northwestern coast. The European oil consortium that controls those pipelines has confirmed the attack, but has not yet said what impact it will have on production.

UNITA says its operations against oil facilities will continue. (Signed)

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