ONE THOUSAND people will die in Angola today and every day in the human tragedy which evades our television screens and therefore our awareness.
Since UNITA forces began their murderous bid for power in October 1992, an estimated 250,000 have been killed and two million displaced out of a total population of 10 million.
About two thirds of the country is controlled by UNITA: much of the humanitarian aid like food and medicines has to be channelled through them.
Hospitals outside of the capital, Luanda, are poorly equipped and stocked and increasingly perform amputations on many who lose their limbs to mines planted by UNITA.
There were reports last year from the town of Menongue that people were eating cats, dogs and mice to keep alive as food either doesn't get through or is pilfered by UNITA soldiers.
The Angolan Armed Forces (FAA), loyal to the democratically elected Government, have regained the military initiative in recent months following substantial arms purchases and a recruitment drive.
Their strategy has been to cut off UNITA's supply routes from the Zairean and Namibian borders to prevent restocking of food and arms as well as cut off De Clerk arms UNITA murderers financial support.
UNITA's control of the oil and diamond producing areas and its involvement in ivory and timber smuggling net it an enormous income to purchase arms, lobby western governments and secure South African mercenary assistance.
Not that it needs more arms: the considerable stockpile given it by the South African regime could keep the war going for another ten years.
Rural strength
Traditionally UNITA has been strongest at rural guerrilla warfare. Having encircled the countryside around a city or town it lays siege and, having worn down the defences, captures it.
The FAA are now trying to turn. the tables by pursuing this strategy against UNITA-controlled towns like Huambo, the base of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.
They have been frustrated by active collusion between the Zairean dictatorship and sections of the South African military in supplying arms to UNITA and allowing a conduit out of Angola for illegally mined diamonds. (See SO 39)
United Nations sanctions on sale of arms and fuel to UNITA have therefore been ineffective and Angolan solidarity activists in Britain have been demanding more severe measures, including the freezing of UNITA funds in western banks and its political isolation through closure of its offices abroad.
The swing in opinion against UNITA has forced it to the negotiating table in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, though little progress has been made over the last three months.
Savimbi knows he is unlikely to take control of the whole country but he also knows that the evenly matched military strengths of the two sides means a political deal will have to be struck sooner or later.
While even some Angolan cabinet ministers are resigned to giving Savimbi a fiefdom in order to stop the bloodshed, the military leadership of the FAA is against any concessions. They believe they will soon have UNITA on the defensive and Savimbi in a weaker bargaining position.
Meanwhile in South Africa and Mozambique, where elections are due this year, politicians and people alike are scrutinising the lessons of the killing fields of Angola. Israeli soldiers block way into Jerusalem mosque zonist extremists get back to basics AFTER the Hebron massacre, in which an Israeli settler murdered some 50 Palestinian worshippers in a mosque, Israeli troops shot dead dozens more in renewed clashes.
In scenes reminiscent of the early days of the Intifada, Palestinian citizens of Israel took to the streets in mass demonstrations.
Many were injured and at least two shot dead by Israeli police, the first Palestinians to die in demonstrations in the state of Israel since Land Day in 1976.
PLO leader Yasser Arafat sought minimal concessions from Israel in a desperate attempt to restore his waning popularity and the flagging credibility of the September clarify what they see as ambiagreement.
But Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin made it clear that there would be no disarming of the quarter million settlers in the occupied territories, and no dismantling of the settlements.
Massacres, expulsions, genocide and ethnic cleansing remain the essence of Zionist colonisation of Palestine.
The latest events show the true nature of the agreement, in which the PLO accepted the legitimacy of Zionism and of the state of Israel, and undertook to collaborate in the control of the occupied territories, while receiving no concessions from Israel on the central demands raised by the Palestinian people in the Intifada.
His party has just been given