ENEMY BLOCKED, ANGOLAN REBEL SAYS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201320001-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 13, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: October 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201320001-6
ARTI"I.E APPEA D
ON PAGE
NEW YORK TIMES
9 October 1985
Enemy Blocked, Angolan Rebel Says
_T By ALAN COWELL
SpeWl to The New Yost Timm
MAVINGA, Angola, Oct. 7 - The
leader of a South African-backed rebel-
lion in this country appealed today for
United States aid to help him fight what
he said was a Soviet-directed Angolan
offensive against him.
At the same time, the guerrilla lead-
er, Jonas Savimbi, asserted that his
rebel forces had driven off a Soviet-di-
rected push against his forward head-
quarters here.
The Angolan Government forces, he
slrid at a news conference in a bunker
hewn from the savanna, were "in very
bad shape."
"For the short term," be said, "I
think they'll go. But I think they will
reorganize and come again."
'A Will to Resist'
Repeating his assertion that Soviet
aydvisers were directing Government
troops, he added: "The Russians want
to test whether there's a will to resist
them or not."
The Russians, he said, were "like
elephants who come and go on the
same track." So, be said, he assumed
tDereSincewould be more Government of-
t fives.
? the repeal of United States
legislation forbidding assistance to his
National Union for the Total Independ-
gnce of Angola, he said, he had sent
representatives to Washington seeking
aid.
' Mr. Savimbi said he believed figures
i}r the Reagan Administration, whom
he did not identify, were sympathetic
to his cause, but, he said, referring to
the Americans:"I still put this ques
tion: When are you coming in? Wheh?"
He did not define the nature of the
assistance he was seeking from the
United States.
The rebel leader has been fighting
from bases in the sparsely populated
southeastern part of the country since
his South African-supported forces lost
to the Cuban-backed Popular Move-
mentfor the Liberation of Angola in a
civil war at the time of independence
from Portugal in 1975.
Reporters based in South Africa
were flown here Sunday night for the
news conference and a tour of a battle.
field to the north where Government
forces were reportedly beaten back in a
fight in late September.
Mr. Savimbi's news conference in
Mavinga, 150 miles north of the border
with South African-controlled South-
West Africa, was the first since the bat-
tle, part of a two-pronged offensive that
forced the rebels to abandon Cazombo,
to the northeast, last month.
The news conference could not have
been arranged without South African
assent and was apparently designed to
give Mr. Savimbi a platform for his ap-
peal to the United States in the midst of
what he says is the biggest Govern-
ment offensive in a decade.
Battle for Mavinga
Mr. Savimbi. said the fighting for
Mavinga, with Its long, strategically
important airstrip, hod pitted 4,1100
Government soldiers, backed by the
Angolan Air Force and purportedly led
by Soviet advisers, against 5,500 of his
own men. The battle took place about
20 miles northwest of here at the
Lomba River, he said.
In what seemed a reflection of fierce
fighting, he said his forces had lost 410
men dead and 832 wounded. He said
losses incurred by the avowedly Marx-
ist Government in Luanda included
2,300 men dead or wounded, 79 vehicles
destroyed, 17 aircraft, including five
advanced, Soviet-supplied MI-25 heli-
copters, brought down, and 60 pris-
oners taken, including the pilot of a
MIG-21 jet fighter.
Mr. Savimbi did not present evidence
of such high casualties on either side.
During a visit to the Lomba River area,
reporters saw eight corpses clad in
Government-issue uniforms. In sandy
soil, they were shown what rebel offi-
cers said were the graves of eight
more. But it was unclear if there were
more dead in other parts of the battle
area not visited by reporters. Rebel
casualties were not shown to reporters.
Mr. Savimbi has fought off four
previous offensives against positions in
southeastern Angola, where he has
held Mavinga for the last four years.
The latest, however, he said, was the
biggest yet and seemed to have been
launched for various reasons.
One was to win a Government vic-
tory before a congress of the ruling
party in December, he said. Another
was "to discourage the Americans
from getting involved" following the
repeal of the Clark Amendment -1976
legislation forbidding United States
support for his movement.
Cuban Troops In Angola
An estimated 25,000 to 30,000 Cuban
soldiers are based in Angola to support
the Luanda Government, and Western
diplomats say there are also Soviet
military advisers, who have not, how-
ever, previously been reported as hav-
ing accompanied Government troops
into battle. There has been no inde-
pendent corroboration of the charge
that Soviet advisers were present on
the battlefield.
Mr. Savimbi denied that he had re-
quested South African air strikes in
support of his forces or that South Af-
rican ground troops had joined the fight
Angolan Government forces.
There was no way of substantiating the
conflicting assertions of either side in
the battle about who had fought in sup-
port of whom.
Mr. Savimbi acknowledged that, in
the last four weeks, supplies of arms
from South Africa and other unidenti-
fied countries had been greater than at
any other time in 10 years of fighting.
He said his troops had received signifi-
cant shipments of antitank weapons
and antiaircraft systems. Moreover, he
said, South Africa had provided medi-
cal personnel to tend his wounded.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201320001-6