Priority is new refugees - UNHCR

The refugee agency UNHCR says it needs time to relocate Angolan refugees in Zambia away from a camp close to the border, following concerns that it is being used by UNITA rebels as a training and logistical base. "UNHCR has been concerned about these allegations and there has been talk of relocation, and while that still may be on the table, we are confronted by the needs of the new arrivals from Angola," UNHCR southern Africa spokesman Fidelis Swai told IRIN on Wednesday. Around 4,000 refugees have crossed into Zambia since last week, fleeing renewed fighting in southeast Angola. Nangweshi, the main refugee camp in the region, lies on the western fringe of Zambia, isolated from the rest of the country by the Zambezi river. Home to 15,000 Angolans, what UNHCR describes as a model camp was set up at the end of 1999 to shelter an earlier influx of refugees fleeing fighting around Jamba, a major UNITA stronghold in southeastern Angola. However, the UN's Monitoring Mechanism on Sanctions against UNITA has expressed concern that UNITA intelligence officers of the Brigada de Informacao Geral (BIG) operate in Nangweshi, and that the camp may be used as a rebel logistical base. In a supplementary report to the UN Security Council earlier this month, the Monitoring Mechanism said: "The Mechanism believes that ideally the camp should be moved further away from the border. Should that not be possible, another option would be to ensure that the refugee leadership does not include anyone who had leading functions in Jamba, or who could build up UNITA control over the camp." Swai told IRIN that the will was there to move the camp, "but we need to have the right logistics on the ground. It takes a lot of planning. Nangweshi is not a makeshift camp, it's one of the best organised in Africa". It has also reached its saturation point, and UNHCR's priority is to move the latest influx of refugees from a temporary holding ground outside Nangweshi, to a new camp in western Zambia whose location is still to be agreed with the Zambian authorities. Nangweshi, some 140 km from the border, is a remote and hard to reach settlement. Although there has been concern for some time among humanitarian workers that UNITA operatives could slip in and out of the camp, Swai said he could not "confirm or deny" that any military training took place in Nangweshi. "We've not seen people training with guns," he said, but acknowledged that any military activity would be clandestine. He added that responsibility for security in the camp rested with the Zambian government. The UNHCR spokesman said in the first influx in 1999, UNITA soldiers among the refugees had been identified and separated from civilians for settlement in eastern Zambia. "But those who come pretending to be civilians are difficult to sort out. Yes, we've had this problem. But as far as I know, the people in Nangweshi are civilians until the government does its operations to sort out these [security] people from the civilian population." For more details on Nangweshi see the following IRIN report