Catholics willing to broker Angola peace

MALANGE, Angola (Reuters) -- The Catholic Church is willing to be a peace-broker in Angola's decades-old civil war and is intent on reconciliation, but faces lingering suspicion from the government, the Bishop of Malange said.

"The church's intention is to promote peace and itself as an independent institution but we face serious constraints," Bishop Luis Maria Perez de Onraita told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

"The church has a certain power due to its relationship with the people and the government is not comfortable with this," said De Onraita, who lives 425 km (255 miles) by road east of the capital Luanda.

But relations with the government have improved to "polite," in contrast with the former Marxist era when the government was openly hostile and "the church suffered many insults," he said.

Luanda has been locked in a civil war with the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) led by veteran guerrilla Jonas Savimbi for 25 years.

About one million people have been killed in Africa's longest running conflict and some 2.6 million have fled the fighting in the former Portuguese colony.

The government-approved political version of UNITA, called UNITA Renovada, has seats in the national assembly. But Luanda refuses to negotiate with the more powerful rebels.

Despite international sanctions, rebels still trade diamonds for arms. Lucrative offshore oil fields fuel Luanda's war machine. Analysts say neither side can win.

"UNITA would like peace and reconciliation but on its own terms," De Onraita said. "The government also wants dialogue but with UNITA Renovada only."

"The war is with Savimbi, not Renovada, so dialogue and reconciliation has to be with him," he added.

Given UNITA's capacity for violence, it was neither possible nor advisable for the church to initiate direct links with the rebels, the bishop said. "Such contacts could only be in the context of the process of peace and reconciliation," he said.

Still, the church operates far beyond the security perimeter to which aid organizations are limited in this eastern city.

One European missionary lives in relative peace in Calandula some 85 km (52 miles) northwest of Malange, where he has encountered both rebels and the army. He has been attacked twice in the past year by bandits, though it's unclear where their allegiance lay.

De Onraita, a Spaniard who arrived in Angola in 1952 and in Malange in 1996, witnessed the rebel shelling of Malange in 1998 and has seen peace accords come and go.

A United Nations-backed peace deal in 1991 led to elections in 1992. But Savimbi rejected the outcome and returned to the bush to resume fighting.

The latest peace agreement, the 1994 Lusaka Accord, was poorly implemented and fighting resumed in late 1998.

Since late 1999 the government has essentially wiped out UNITA's ability to wage conventional war.

But while the government controls the Atlantic coast and most major centers, it lacks control of large expanses of open territory and UNITA continues to launch unpredictable and widespread guerrilla attacks across the country.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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