IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 8 covering the period 19 - 26 February 1999

ANGOLA: Peacekeeping mission ends The UN Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA) ceased operations this Friday, but the Security Council was expected to adopt a new resolution on the future of a UN presence in Angola. By Friday, all units of the MONUA military and police observer contingent were due to have withdrawn from the provinces pending their departure from a country in which civil war has raged sporadically since independence from Portugal in 1975. UN peacekeepers, who once numbered 7,000, have been in Angola for a decade. The government had earlier made it clear that only a UN humanitarian presence would now be welcome in the country. The official state-controlled media blamed MONUA for the renewed fighting between government forces and the UNITA rebel movement which, since December, has resulted in a breakdown of the UN-brokered 1994 Lusaka Protocol peace accords. “I don’t think that this press does justice to what has been happening. But definitely the country is at war again,” a senior UN official in Luanda told IRIN this week. “It is a difficult moment, one where we should all join forces to help overcome the difficulties the Angolan people are facing.” New measures against UNITA In New York meanwhile, UN Security Council President Ambassador Robert Fowler of Canada said that council members were “very supportive” of imposing additional sanctions against UNITA and had agreed to commission a study on the effectiveness of the current sanctions regime against the rebel movement. MONUA mourns plane crash victims On Wednesday, MONUA observers attended a memorial service for colleagues who died aboard two UN aircraft shot down outside the second city of Huambo. UN officials said that they had only been able to make a single preliminary inspection visit to each of the crash sites outside Huambo in the central highlands 600 km southeast of Luanda. The inspections established that the aircraft, both Hercules C-130 transport planes, were shot down. The UN has not said who might be responsible. The first aircraft, with 14 UN personnel and crew was brought down on 26 December last year, and the second carrying nine people, a week later on 2 January. UN humanitarian coordinator “extremely pessimistic” Francesco Strippoli, the UN humanitarian coordinator and WFP representative said on Thursday he was “extremely pessimistic” about the plight of huge numbers of people being displaced by increased fighting in recent weeks. In an interview with IRIN, Strippoli said that since April last year, over 600,000 people had been displaced and that their number was now bound to increase. “I am extremely pessimistic because the country continues to be affected by fighting and new displacements,” he said. “On the other hand, we are not only concerned about people who have been displaced, but by the situation of the general population at large in cities under siege.” General population also vulnerable The UN humanitarian community in Angola is further concerned at the increasing vulnerability of people in towns and cities having to compete for increasingly-limited resources with the tens of thousands of internally-displaced people who turn up on their doorsteps in desperate need of food, medical help and shelter. This was why, he said, there was concern “for the general population as a whole”. Strippoli said he was worried that with more government resources going towards the war less support would be provided for the social sector in Angola. With most roads in the country too dangerous to use because of the security situation, the cost of providing aid had increased dramatically because most emergency supplies have to be sent by air. There were also many areas of the country to which the humanitarian community had no access. However, he added, despite the costly humanitarian airlifts, “you can be sure that we will continue to use every means” to respond. Over the past two weeks, despite heavy UNITA shelling of the city of Malanje, some 350 km east of the capital Luanda, four to five trucks of emergency aid were arriving daily. “Access to areas where there is heavy fighting is very difficult. M’banza Congo, the Zaire province capital in northern Angola, for example, is one area where we still have to wait for conditions to enable us to assess the situation,” Strippoli said. “Access to non-government controlled areas is being negotiated in New York and other forums. It is a situation we are following with the view that every Angolan has the right to aid,” he said. In government-controlled areas of Angola, he said he was “very proud” that humanitarian coordination with the authorities both at central government level and in the provinces was going well with “very good working cooperation”. Given the crisis in the country, and its return to war following the breakdown of the UN-brokered Lusaka Protocol peace accords, Strippoli said donor nations would be kept aware of the need for timely funding to ensure Angola’s serious humanitarian needs. Dos Santos meets Southern African leaders On the political front, Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos held talks this week with his Mozambique counterpart, Joaquim Chissano and South Africa’s foreign minister, Alfred Nzo, on ways of resolving tensions with neighbouring Zambia and the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Officials told IRIN Nzo had conveyed a message from President Nelson Mandela suggesting that dos Santos and Zambian President Frederick Chiluba discuss Angolan charges that Zambia had been providing arms to UNITA. Although sources in Luanda and the South African capital, Pretoria, declined to discuss further details of the talks, they said Mandela had conveyed a message of concern for the security of the DRC’s neighbours and the implementation of a ceasefire in that country. The officials said Chissano, in his role as vice-president of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), spent more than five hours discussing the same issues with dos Santos as part of a regional shuttle trip which had already taken him to Zambia, Uganda and the DRC capital, Kinshasa. In a brief Angolan television interview, dos Santos, was asked whether he would accept an invitation to meet Chiluba. He said: “Such a meeting is always welcome, but there are serious problems to resolve. We have reiterated Zambia’s involvement in the process of destabilising Angola, and even said that Zambia was taking part in an aggression against Angola. We would, therefore, only attend a meeting if we could see changes in the attitude of the government of Zambia and its president.” ZIMBABWE: Mugabe lashes out at white Zimbabweans President Robert Mugabe marked his 75th birthday this week by criticising white Zimbabweans and accusing them of campaigning against him. Speaking on state television Mugabe said many white farmers were “meddling” in the country’s politics and lobbying the IMF to refuse further funding to Zimbabwe. The IMF has already frozen nearly US$ 53 million in aid because of Zimbabwe’s controversial land policy. Continued land seizures Media sources said Mugabe added he would go ahead with plans to seize 841 farms. Mugabe said if the government could not pay farmers immediately they would receive a written promise of future payment. But an IMF official told IRIN Mugabe had told the IMF farmers would receive payment in advance and in cash. NAMIBIA: US denies agreeing to grant asylum The United States denied reports in the press this week that it had agreed to grant refuge to the 15 Namibians who were recently granted political asylum by the Botswana Government. Kelly Keiderling, spokesperson for the US embassy in Gaborone told IRIN the US had not made any decision on the question of granting asylum. She said media reports were inaccurate and any application for asylum in the US would have to go through the proper channels. ‘The Namibian’ newspaper reported this week the US was “agreeable to providing refuge” to the Namibians, who fled the Caprivi Strip after they were accused of supporting a secessionist movement. Keiderling said UNHCR had approached a number of countries including the US about the fate of the 15. She added UNHCR would have to approach the US’s Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) representative in Nairobi who would then take up the case and follow it through the correct procedures in Washington. Meanwhile, judges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague were scheduled to continue hearing claims by the two countries on disputed territory in the Caprivi Strip. MOZAMBIQUE: Good harvest expected Officials in Mozambique told IRIN this week a good harvest was expected this year even though some parts of the country had been subjected to heavy torrential rain and flooding in recent weeks. Regions most affected by the rain and floods included GAZA in the south and SOFALA and ZAMBEZIA in the central part of the country. Harvest expected to bypass initial target A spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture told IRIN the harvest was expected to bypass the expected target of 1.7 million mt of grain. He added despite yearly floods, food production was increasing each year. In 1997 floods destroyed nearly 100,000 hectares of crops. Since mid-January this year, floods had destroyed only an estimated 44,000 hectares, he added. The spokesperson said the government was providing assistance in the form of seeds and other agricultural products to farmers in flooded areas. SOUTHERN AFRICA: Small arms to be destroyed South Africa announced this week it would destroy all surplus small arms because it was concerned at the “devastating effect” of the proliferation of such weapons in the sub-continent. The announcement was made in a statement by the foreign ministry following a meeting of the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC). The statement said South African police had already started destroying arms worth an estimated US $18 million. NCACC chairman Kader Asmal said the decision “forms part of the government’s strategy to curtail the excessive and destabilising accumulation of small arms. The magnitude of the problem is of such a nature that it can only be addressed through appropriate national, regional and international action.”