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CU Spokesman of the National Union for the Complete Independence of Angola (UNITA) speaking in English Visnews reporter Brendan Farrow
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FERNANDEZ: "It is an alliance which is going to bring everybody together, in order to resist the common enemy and why UNITA's doing that, because we are confident enough, we are strong enough to be able to control the alliance, militarily and politically. We can give to the other members training which they seem not to have. We can give them other courses, on communications and sabotage. And I think this will increase our total opposition to MPLA forces."



FARROW: "But are you seriously arguing that the guerrillas can dislodge the MPLA?"



FERNANDEZ: "We can dislodge the PMLA. We have proven that the MPLA cannot win, the Cubans cannot win, although we ourselves not winning neither. But if this unity we are forming now, really succeeds, we shall get much more support for our friends and therefore we hope to defeat on the spot, the Cuban forces. the stepping up of our operations in Angola is direct consequence of our military and political togetherness. When we are together with FNLA, UNTA forces will be able to move to the coffee plantations, the plantation area of Angola in the north, and FNLA will be able to move also in the south, and so forth, even in Cabinda where FLEC is fighting, FLEC is still fighting in Cabinda, we will be able to move our forces from the south to Cabinda and meet the Cubans and MPLA there, and that's going to be done very soon."



MPLA -- initials of Popular Liberation Movement of Angola; FLEC -- initials of Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda. Mr. Fernandez claims that there are now thirty thousand Cuban troops stationed in angola supporting the MPLA government.




Initials BB/


REPORTER: BRENDAN FARROW

Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Angola's two largest anti-government forces are planning to join forces. The National Union for the Complete Independence of Angola (UNITA), which claims to control nearly to-third of the former Portuguese colony, and Holden Roberto's Angolan National Liberation Front (FNLA), which is still operating in the north, were rivals for power in the 1975 to 1976 civil war. A spokesman for UNITA, Mr. Tony Fernandez, told Visnews reporter Brendan Farrow on Tuesday (15 May) in London, that the new united front would make Cuba think again about supporting the government of President Antonio Agostinho Neto.