Dhlakama announces permanent truce – Mozambique

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Dhlakama announces permanent truce – Mozambique

9:59 CAT | 04 May 2017

epa04452129 Afonso Dhlakama, leader of Renamo, talks to the journalists during a press conference about the Mozambican post-electoral situation, Maputo, Mozambique, 18 October 2014. Renamo said two days earlier it rejected the election results, sparking concern that it might resume its two-year, low-level insurgency that ended with a peace deal in August. EPA/ANTONIO SILVA

File photo

Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama will announce a definitive truce pending the signing of a third peace agreement between the government and the main opposition party, both of which have been involved in direct peacemaking negotiations in Mozambique since last December.

“The truce I announced is underway, but instead of continuing to give 60 days, renewable, now I think I can declare a truce without a deadline,” Afonso Dhlakama said in a telephone interview yesterday, although he warned that the final truce would only coincide with the end of the war, and the signing of an agreement with the government.

Dhlakama, who is due to announce the extension of the truce this Thursday via teleconference with journalists in Maputo, said that one of the visible steps that negotiations had produced was the withdrawal of government forces from Gorongosa, a process that should be completed by June.

Afonso Dhlakama said that the government and Renamo groups are expected to arrive in Gorongosa today to begin the joint operation of peacekeeping verification and control centres.

One of the centres will in Gorongosa, Renamo’s largest area of operations, with four personnel from each side, while the other will operate in Maputo with two people from the government and two from Renamo.

Dhlakama has meanwhile denied that there is “secrecy in the negotiations”, saying that the way things were being done would safeguard those ideas and steps to be accomplished and lead to an agreement without loopholes, unlike the previous two agreements.

Source: Voa Portugues