ANGOLAN GUERRILLAS FAIL TO HEAL RIFT
[The following item has been translated by World Outlook from the February 10 issue of IV Internazionale, an Italian biweekly news bulletin published in Rome. |
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In issue No. 19 (1966) of IV Internazionale, we printed the news of a partial reconciliation which took place in Cairo between the two Angolan nationalist movements -- Holden Roberto's movement, represented by the GRAE [Revolutionary Government of Angola in Exile], and the movement led by Agostino Neto [MPLA -- People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola]. -
According to a recent bulletin of the FLNA [National Front for the Liberation of Angola, the fighting forces headed by Holden Roberto], representatives of the FLNA and MPLA agreed at a meeting last October to: (1) cease all hostile propaganda against each other; (2) free the prisoners held by each side; (3) send an OAU. [Organization of African Unity] military commission to the guerrilla zone in Angola to reevaluate the forces in the field; (4) set up a joint commission to study the possibilities for cooperation between the two sides. : . . :
Shortly after the Cairo meeting, in response to comment in the African press, Holden Roberto declared that it was premature.to call the Cairo document "a pact of cooperation" because it was not possible to overcome a deeply rooted division. with a wave of the magician's wand.
According to the February 1967 FLNA bulletin published in Cairo, "The October document could at most, owing most particularly to its first point, have prepared the way psychologically for a hoped-for reconciliation. As'for the second point, an impasse was indeed inevitable, since, despite all the evidence collected by us (the testimony of a UTA hostess present on the day Matias Migueis and Jose Miquel were arrested and photo-copies of documents from the airlines which transported the two to Brazzaville where they later disappeared), the MPLA of Neto continues to dismiss our accusations, and even puts the blame for their disappearance on Congolese army commandos. (Lluis de Azevzdo's deposition to the Congolese parliamentary commission)."
Further, according to the FLNA, Neto is also violating the first point of the Cairo document by continuing his public attacks (such attacks are said to have been broadcast over Radio Brazzaville in particular).
For his part, Neto has accused Holden Roberto of failing to keep the commitments. A violent attack along these lines was expressed in an interview which appeared last December in the official Algerian army magazine El Djeich, where the MPLA leader referred to the "so-called GRAE," and maintained that the FLNA "owes its existence exclusively to the support of the Congolese authorities and some elements in the OAU."