Moscow seeks pilots allegedly held by UNITA

The Russian authorities on Tuesday asked Angola's ambassador in Moscow "to do his utmost" to help find three Russian airmen reportedly captured last week by the UNITA rebel movement. In a brief dispatch, the Russian Interfax news agency said Moscow was concerned about the plight of the crew of an AN-26 aircraft shot down on 12 May in the Luzamba District of Lunda Norte Province in northeast Angola. Interfax said the Russian foreign ministry confirmed a UNITA report that the aircraft had crashed into marshes after a rocket hit its left engine. It identified the crewmen as first pilot Aleksandr Zaitsev, second pilot Sergei Sakharov, and flight engineer, Sergei Chestuyakov. In a statement issued on Monday from its headquarters in Bailundo, UNITA condemned Russia for "sending mercenaries to Angola", but said the three Russians "are with the party's leadership and their health is good". In an earlier statement a day after the incident, UNITA said all aboard the aircraft had died. It said it had deliberately issued a misleading statement "to prevent a hot pursuit operation from being mounted". Western diplomats in the capital, Luanda, told IRIN that at least half a dozen Soviet-era aircraft had either crashed or been shot down in Angola in the past year. Earlier this month, the UN Security Council said it had still not been granted sufficient access to conduct a proper investigation into two UN-chartered Hercules cargo planes shot down late December and early January in UNITA territory near the central highlands towns of Huambo and Kuito.