ANGOLAN WARNS ON REBEL AID

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402900005-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: October 25, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402900005-5
ARTICLE APPEARED
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Angolan
Warns on
Rebel Aid
Dangers to U.S.
Cited by Dos Santos
lay Ji
M' miton Poet Foreign Service
NEW YORK, Oct. 24-Angolan
President Jose Eduardo dos Santos
warned today that renewal of U.S.
support for the rebel movement led
by Jonas Savimbi would pose direct
dangers for American economic
interests in his country and gravely
damage prospects for a regional
peace settlement in southern Afri-
ca.
Dos Santos, whose Marxist gov-
ernment controls one of the five
Third World nations singled out for
condemnation by President Reagan
at the United Nations today for be-
ing "at war with their own people,"
predicted that Savimbi would use
U.S. aid to intensify sabotage cam-
paigns by the National Union for
the Total Independence of Angola
(UNITA) against American compa-
nies and citizens working in Angola.
"If this aid is given to UNITA,
the war situation in Angola would
be more dangerous," dos Santos
said in an interview, adding that
such a move would "contradict" and
undermine the policies the Reagan
administration has said it is follow-
ing in seeking a Cuban withdrawal
from Angola as part of a regional
peace settlement in southern Afri-
ca.
His remarks provided a strong
counterpoint from the Third World
to Reagan's speech, which attached
responsibility for instability in Af-
rica and Asia to the presence of So-
viet and Cuban troops and advisers,
and which described insurgent
movements like gavimbi's UNITA
as "democratic resistance forces."
WASHINGTON POST
25 October 1985
The sharply contrasting com-
ments from the two leaders ap-
peared certain to intensify a strug-
gle within the Reagan administra-
tion and in Congress over proposals
to provide direct backing for
Savimbi's forces, which failed to
win. control of the former Portu-
guese colony who it was granted
independence in 1975. The State.
Department has said it opposes,
such aid, and U.S. officials appar-
ently repeated this opposition in,
talks with dos Santos this week.
Providing aid to Savimbi would
be "an.act of solidarity by the Unit
ed States" with the white-minority
government of South Africa, which
provides extensive aid to UNITA,
dos Santos said.
He accused UNITA of wanton
killing of civilians and compared the
"terrorist" bombing by UNITA of a
hotel housing Cuban and Angolan
troops in 1983 to the massacre of
U.S. marines in Beirut by a suicide
bomber the same year.
Dos Santos indicated that attacks
by South African forces on his coun-
try this year and stepped-up help
for UNITA have not only justified
but also actually deepened Angola's
reliance on the Cuban expeditionary
force that has been in the country
since 1975. He said that the attacks
had caused him to reassess the
number of Cuban troops Angola
would need in the future to protect
its territory.
But the soft-spoken Angolan
leader, who was trained as a petro-
leum engineer in the Soviet Union,
also disclosed that Angola and the
United States this week reopened
diplomatic contacts that had been
broken off this summer. The State
Department confirmed today that
Undersecretary of State Michael H.
Armacost and Assistant Secretary
of State Chester A. Crocker met
with dos Santos in New York on
Tuesday.
The Reagan administration has
sought for four years to mediate an
agreement between South Africa
and Angola that would lead to a
Cuban troop withdrawal from An-
gola in return for South Africa with-
drawing from the disputed territory
of Namibia and agreeing to indepen-
dence for Namibia to be achieved
under United Nations auspices.
But the U.S effort appeared to
have collapsed after Congress voted
this summer to repeal a law banning
covert .at to UNITA. That law
was enacted in 1976 followin the
unsuccessful attempt by UNITA,
with mcking from South Africa and
the Central Intelligence Agency, to
oust the government of dos Santos'
Popular Movement for the Liber-
ation of Angola.
The U.S. effort already had been
set back in May, when a South Af-
rican commando unit was caught in
the northern Angolan province of
Cabinda attempting to sabotage a
Chevron Oil installation that pro-
vides the Angolan government with
more than 80 percent of its foreign
exchange earnings.
Dos Santos said that the three
South African soldiers in the unit
were accompanied by six UNITA
guerrillas and were carrying prop-
aganda leaflets that would attribute
the raid to UNITA.
Speaking in Portuguese, with a
translator present, the Angolan
president said that despite congres-
sional efforts to provide as much as
$27 million in funding for UNITA,
his government still wanted to im-
prove relations with the Reagan
administration "in terms of dia-
logue."
He said events of the past year
"have very much weakened Amer-
ican credibility as a mediator, but
we would not want to say that role
has been destroyed."
COnt1 v d
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Dos Santos said he still was pre-
pared to negotiate. a phased with-
drawal of most of the Cuban troops,
a proposal he made a year ago in
thy' context of the American medi-
ation effort. He confirmed that he
had then proposed to keep 10,000
to 12,000 Cuban soldiers in Cabinda
and around the capital of Luanda for
an indefinite period after the phased
withdrawal of some 20,000 Cubans
from southern Angola, but added
that "conditions have altered" since
he proposed a residual force of that
size.
In his speech today, President
Reagan said that there were cur-
rently 35,000 Cuban troops in An-
gola and. 1,200 Soviet advisers were
supervising combat operations
there.
Dos Santos conceded that a ma~/
jor offensive mounted by the An-
golan Army last month against
UNITA's headquarters at Jamba in
southern Angola had been "more or
less" stalemated just as it seemed to
be on the verge of success.
He said Angolan troops had bro-
ken through two defensive lines
established by UNITA troops
around the town of Mavinga, and
were making progress in breaking
through the final line of defense
when a heavy South African air at-
tack halted them. The Angolan
leader asserted that white South
African troops had manned the
third line of defense around
Mavinga.
Dos Santos has emphasized in
talks with U.S. officials and busi-
nessmen this week .that he wants to
expand the econonvc ties that have
made Angola the' fourth largest
trading partner for the United
States in sub-Sahara Africa despite
the absence of formal diplomatic
relations between the two coun-
tries. He attended a luncheon today
w4h senior executives of American
banks, oil companies and other busi-
nesses at Bankers' Trust.
"We have established a difference.
between commercial relations and
diplomatic relations, and we don't
intend to alter this in any negative
sense," dos Santos said in the hour-
long interview in a New York hotel.
"We want to enlarge it.
"It is our desire that American
businesses use their influence to
avoid U.S. aid to UNITA. It is bet-
ter to do business in a climate of
peace and stability, and helping
UNITA would undermine that sta-
bility. That would threaten the in-
terests of the United States," he
said.
"If the South African commando
[raid) had succeeded in Cabinda.,
American and Angolan citizens
would have been killed. The Chev-
ron installation would have been
damaged. Is that in the interests of
the United States?" he asked.
He noted that UNITA publicly
claimed responsibility for an attack
that resulted in the death of an
American charter pilot earlier this
year.
Dos Santos said that Angola is
not willing now to return the bodies
of the two white South African sol-
diers killed in May or to hand over
the South African major who was
captured and who told the details of
the operation at a press conference.
"We cannot return them uncondi-
tionally" as South Africa has de-
manded, he said, adding, "They
were not in Angola on a holiday."
He said the six UNITA guerrillas
had escaped during the skirmish in
Cabinda.
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Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402900005-5