US team says most Angolans want elections

A team from the US State Department visiting Angola has said that most Angolans want elections, the BBC reported on Monday. The delegation was visiting the country to determine what conditions need to met before elections can be held. Leader of the team, David Kramer, said that he was not in a position to predict when conditions would be right, but said there was wide-spread support for the election and a general consensus that peace was a pre-condition for the elections to take place.

“The concept of resettlement and how to deal with the question of displaced persons is one which from the government’s perspective is a priority, but not an absolute necessity,” Kramer said. “For most other folks in society, it was regarded as a necessity not just that those people be resettled into some other piece of property, but back into the lands they came from.” Kramer was quoted as saying that the cost of resettling Angola’s displaced people would be huge, and that the government recognised this as a daunting task. He said the report the delegation is to submit to the State Department would not be making any predictions about when conditions would be right for Angolans to go to the polls once again.