Luanda withdraws from UN peacekeeping mission

The Angolan government will not participate in a UN peacekeeping mission to Cote d'Ivoire following claims that Luanda was too close to Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, a senior official told IRIN.

Angola's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joao Bernardo de Miranda, announced on Tuesday that his government was going to decline a UN invitation to send peacekeepers, in what would have been Angola's first UN mission.

Angola's ambassador to South Africa, Isaac Maria dos Anjos, told IRIN that some members of the United Nations had "raised objections to the inclusion of the Angolan troops in the mission - they claimed we are too close to the Cote d'Ivoire government. They [the UN members] claimed that objections had been raised by the opposition in Cote d'Ivoire."

"This is not true - Cote d'Ivoire was the base of the UNITA [Angolan rebel group] for many years. We do not want to create problems; we want to make peace, so we decided not to go," he added.

Cote d'Ivoire has been split since 2002, after a failed coup attempt against Gbagbo. The government controls the southern part of the country, while rebel forces command the north. They are separated by around 4,000 French peacekeepers and 1,000 West African troops.

The UN peacekeeping force in Cote d'Ivoire will be deployed on 4 April, for an initial period of a year. The West African peacekeeping troops currently stationed there will become part of the UN mission.