POLITICS-ANGOLA: Security Council Debates Fate of UN Mission

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 21 1999 (IPS) - U.N. peacekeepers are set to leave Angola within the next two months, but key powers, including the United States and Russia, are pushing for some continued UN diplomatic presence in the troubled country.

The 15-nation UN Security Council acknowledged Thursday that the worsening political and military crisis in Angola was preventing the UN Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA) from carrying out its peacekeeping work. This week, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan argued that with Angola sliding into renewed warfare, there was no remaining role for the more than 1,000 MONUA peacekeepers.

“The Angolan peace process has collapsed, and the country is now in a state of war,” the secretary-general warned. “It has become increasingly clear that, for the time being, the conditions for a meaningful UN peacekeeping role in Angola have ceased to exist.”

With MONUA’s mandate set to expire on Feb. 26, and the Angolan government unwilling to renew it, the stage is set for the Council and Annan to plan a phased withdrawal of the troops. Annan estimated that most personnel will be out of the country by Mar. 20.

However, with Angola returning to war after a UN-guarded peace for the second time this decade, some member states of the Security Council are pushing for the United Nations to maintain some presence on the ground even if the peacekeepers depart.

Council President Celso Amorim of Brazil said the Council shared Annan’s grim assessment of the situation in Angola, but that it also emphasised “the importance it attaches to a continued multidisciplinary presence of the United Nations under the direction of a representative of the secretary-general in Angola”.

Sources said the mission was likely to comprise about 100 personnel, including security officials, and would be restricted largely to work in the relatively peaceful capital, Luanda.

The Council agreed Thursday that any such continued UN diplomatic presence would be conditional on the willingness of the Angolan government to provide security for it. Over the past month, two UN planes have been shot down under mysterious circumstances, resulting in the deaths of 23 people.

UN officials are set to conduct talks with the Angolan government about keeping a diplomatic mission in place as MONUA leaves. But hopes for a strong UN presence look bleak as the world body has been increasingly unable to keep the peace between President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’s government and the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

Angolan officials at the United Nations have underscored that, although dos Santos last week asserted that the government would not extend MONUA’s mandate, it may still accept a diplomatic role for the United Nations. But Annan is skeptical of what a UN mission can accomplish in Angola if MONUA leaves as the country slides back into full-scale fighting.

“Given the situation on the ground, the presence will be more psychological than anything else,” Annan said Thursday about the possibility of a post-MONUA mission. He added that the dos Santos government “until last Friday was maintaining the position that they would not agree to an extension”.

Some UN diplomats believe the government wants the United Nations to leave so that it can carry out a wider offensive against UNITA, which the Security Council and most parties blame for the renewed conflict.

In recent days, UNITA has seized control once more of key bases in central Angola. It is believed to have some 30,000 fighters and a substantial arsenal of arms bought through the rebels’ sale of diamonds in the area under their control.

Russia, the United States and Portugal – a group of nations, dubbed the ‘troika’, which was designated to mediate between the government and UNITA – insist that the United Nations should keep people on the ground to prevent the situation from worsening. But few nations are willing to commit themselves to protecting the UN personnel, who are similarly unwilling to stay on without protection.

“If the parties don’t cooperate, the conclusion is obvious,” argued UN Under-Secretary-General Sergio Vieira de Mello, head of the UN humanitarian office, on Wednesday. “Are we going to continue letting our staff die in Angola? Of course not.”

By the same token, however, many UN staffers remember that when Angola’s peace process broke down in 1992, the lack of international attention and UN presence paved the way for the bloodiest phase in the country’s civil war.

Like the present crisis, the 1992 collapse of the peace process was sparked by UNITA, whose leader Jonas Savimbi refused to accept defeat in elections that year and resumed fighting with thousands of troops who had avoided being disarmed.

Once fighting resumed, the UN peacekeepers – then called the UN Angola Verification Mission – were reduced to a skeleton crew unable to stop the war. Some 500,000 Angolans died before a new cease-fire was declared in 1994.

Last year, UN officials again warned that UNITA had failed to turn in its arms and retire its best fighters; but once again, the United States and other countries responded mainly by warning that the UN troops would withdraw if the situation deteriorated.

With UNITA relying on diamond wealth and the government paying for its own arms buildup through its control of oil reserves, the momentum to full-scale war has picked up sharply. Vieira de Mello said half a million Angolans had been uprooted by the fighting in recent months, while more landmines were being laid in the countryside – already one of the most heavily-mined places in the world.

Annan now has just one month to win the Luanda government’s approval and international support for a well-protected UN mission before the Council has to decide once more on the fate of a post-MONUA Angola.

He also may need to find diplomats willing to handle the crisis: the longest-serving UN envoy on Angola, Alioune Blondin Beye, died last June in a still-unexplained plane crash in Cote d’Ivoire even as he was warning African leaders of the likelihood of renewed war.