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- THE WEEK, Page 20WORLDPutting an End to War
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- Angola and Mozambique reach out for peace after 16 years of
- bloodshed
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- No one ever said peace and democracy would come easily.
- Sixteen bloody years after they were granted abrupt and
- unprepared independence from Portuguese rule, the southern
- African states of Mozambique and Angola finally have peace in
- sight. In Angola, two weeks after the country's first democratic
- election, the contenders seemed at last prepared to accept the
- outcome of the vote. In Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano and
- Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the guerrilla resistance movement
- Renamo, finally signed a peace pact last week.
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- But these reconciliations remained elusive right to the
- end, if indeed there is a peaceful end. Piqued at losing the
- vote to the governing Popular Movement for the Liberation of
- Angola (MPLA), erstwhile rebel Jonas Savimbi, leader of the
- National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA),
- claimed that the MPLA rigged the result and only reluctantly
- withdrew his threat to take his troops out of the newly unified
- Angolan army, a move that would have put the country back on the
- brink of civil war. In Mozambique the immediate problem is to
- get the message of peace out to Renamo bands in the bush. Three
- days after the peace signing, rebels ambushed three trucks on
- the road from Swaziland, killing two of the drivers.
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