No conditions for elections - US assessment team

An assessment team from the United States concluded on Monday that conditions were not appropriate for Angola to hold elections as planned in late 2002. “Today there are no conditions, but those conditions may be created in the short term”, Lusa quoted David Kramer as saying at the close of a two-week visit to the country. Kramer led a US team composed of representatives from his International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for Foreign Affairs and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Their mission was to assess electoral conditions in the war-torn country. According to the report, Kramer emphasised that elections should take place in a climate of peace, and said that “other conditions” included a number of adjustments to the country’s legal framework, including revision of the laws on political parties and party financing. According to the report, Kramer cautioned against believing that elections would bring peace to Angola. “Elections have to be part of a process in which the people who are going to take part agree that, whether they win or lose, they will respect the results and continue to work within the process,” he was quoted as saying, adding that “the Church has a very strong role to play in the process of achieving peace”. President Jose Eduardo dos Santos earlier this year announced plans to hold elections in the second half of 2002. However, on 31 July the Council of the Republic set a number of conditions for the ballot, among them the free circulation of goods and people throughout the country. The first and only nationwide elections in Angola were held in 1992, during an interval in the ongoing civil war that has pitted the Luanda government against the UNITA rebel movement for most of the period since independence from Portugal in 1975.