UNITA to challenge UN sanctions

The Angolan UNITA rebel movement said on Friday it was preparing a legal challenge against broad United Nations sanctions, basing its case on recent French disclosures of arms trafficking to the Angolan government in the early 1990s, Lusa said. “Given the revelations” in court cases underway in France, UNITA was “fully justified” in having “rearmed itself in 1996 in self-defence”, the statement said. “The discriminatory sanctions”, which cover embargoes on arms and fuel, the prohibition of travel by UNITA officials and the freezing of accounts, among other restrictions, “have caused thousands of deaths” and “prejudiced hundreds of (UNITA) students” abroad, it added. The court cases which recently opened in France, centre on charges that some US $500 million in illegal arms sales were made to the Angolan government by allegedly corrupt Angolan and French officials.