US searches for a new relationship

A decade after the end of the Cold War, the US government is re-assessing its interests in oil-rich Angola and attempting to build a “mature relationship” with the authorities in Luanda, diplomats told IRIN. Washington has recently moved ahead with a Bilateral Consultative Commission (BCC) with Luanda, providing a “unique forum in which the fundamental issues facing Angola can be discussed,” according to a special report this month by the influential United States Institute of Peace (USIP). http://www.usip.org “There is a dimension of searching for a relationship with Angola”, a US embassy official in Luanda told IRIN, after a recent history in which superpower rivalry determined US interests and Washington was an implacable foe of Soviet- and Cuban- backed Angola. According to USIP, Angola provides seven percent of US daily imports of oil, a figure that could double in the next five years. Given current projections, Angola will produce 2.5 million barrels of oil per day by 2015, more than Kuwait’s current daily production. “This is the hottest market anywhere,” the embassy official said. “Angola clearly must be treated as a country in which the United States has direct national security interests,” the USIP report stressed. Angola is a sub-regional power, yet Washington has “more people in its Nepalese embassy than here, and the aid programme is twice as big,” the embassy official noted. Complicating US support for Luanda is the continuing civil war and residual support in Congress from the Cold War days for UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. Despite the attempt to build relations through the BCC, Washington insists it will promote issues of transparency and good government in Angola, as well as advocating human rights and economic reforms. The US government on Wednesday called for the immediate release of detained Angolan journalist Rafael Marques, arrested on 16 October and charged with defamation after writing an article allegedly critical of President Eduardo dos Santos. “The United States is rightly hesitant about becoming too close - to fast - to an Angolan government that fails to stop massive corruption, perpetrates human rights abuses, and uses its military to destabilise neighbouring governments,” the USIP report said. However, the institute, a non-partisan body created by Congress, believes that the foundations must be laid now for resolving the Angolan conflict. Washington has lobbied Angola’s neighbours over supplies to UNITA, has incorporated UN sanctions against the rebels into US law, and supports the UN Angola Sanctions Committee’s call for the stationing of regional monitors to oversee compliance. The embassy official insisted that no military assistance to Luanda was envisaged, but Washington has “facilitated” Angola’s purchase of sophisticated dual-use radar systems to help interdict sanctions-busting flights to UNITA bases. However, responding to allegations the US has provided Luanda with satellite reconnaissance images, the official added: “There is nothing like intelligence sharing.”