Cabinda is safe â€"â€" Minister

Dec 31, 2009

<br>LUANDA - The oil-rich enclave of Cabinda will be safe during the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament in January, a government minister and former separatist leader have said.

LUANDA - The oil-rich enclave of Cabinda will be safe during the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament in January, a government minister and former separatist leader have said.

“I categorically insist that all conditions for peace and security have been met in Cabinda,” said Antonio Bento Bembe, who once led the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) but is now a minister without portfolio tasked with human rights.

In recent months, FLEC has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of a Chinese worker and the killing of several Angolan soldiers.

“These are lies,” Bento Bembe told AFP. “The world doesn’t lack for thrill-seekers, and some are belligerent, but these are fabrications, pure and simple.”

Cabinda is one of four Angolan provinces that will host the African championships, and is wedged between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo. A separatist movement broke out as Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975.

A peace deal was signed in 2006 between Angola’s government and the rebels under Bento Bembe’s leadership, but another FLEC faction has refused to sign on.

  • Tour operators welcomed plans for war-battered Angola’s first regulated taxi service to be introduced ahead of the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations.

    “This is a positive step for Angola because it must be one of the few places in the world which doesn’t have taxis,” said an official. To date, public transport has been limited to overcrowded, slow and dilapidated minibuses that cram in 18 people at a time and are regularly in accidents.

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