Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 21, 1994                   TAG: 9411220068
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: JOHANNESBURG                                 LENGTH: Medium

ANGOLA, REBELS SIGN PEACE PACT

The reason given by a spokesman for Savimbi, leader of the rebel movement UNITA, was that continued fighting in Angola made it unsafe for him to fly out of the country to attend the pact-signing ceremony in Lusaka, Zambia.

With Savimbi a no-show, the agreement was signed instead by the secretary general of UNITA - the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola - and the foreign minister of the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos after a year of negotiation under U.N. sponsorship.

At the Lusaka ceremony, U.N. envoy Alione Blondin Beye, representatives from nearly 30 African nations and observers from the United States, Portugal and Russia applauded as the two sides agreed to end a war that has taken more than a half-million lives since it broke out shortly after Angola won its independence from Portugal in 1975.

``Now that we have signed the agreement, there will be no more violence, no more war,'' Angolan Foreign Minister Venancio de Moura said.

``With the spirit of national reconciliation, all Angolans should forgive and forget the suffering from the conflict,'' UNITA Secretary General Eugenio Manuvakola said.

Yet both in Lusaka and in Luanda, the capital of Angola, hopes for an end to the fighting were dampened by Savimbi's absence. ``There's no question this diminishes the whole peace process,'' an African diplomat said. ``It leaves the impression that UNITA isn't really serious.''