Instead, he urged dialogue between the Congolese leaders to resolve the ongoing conflict.
“There is no military way out to this war,” the bishop of Lubango, in southern Angola, said Saturday when he addressed thousands of faithful gathered in the Fatima shrine for a religious ceremony.
“The war should end in people´s hearts,” he added. “We struggle for dialogue; dialogue is what will resolve the Angolan question.”
On Nov. 1, Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos said in Luanda that the country´s 26-year civil war was “virtually finished,” and that the rebellion of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) no longer has any “residual troops.”
Bishop Camuenho is now working to effect a meeting between the Angolan president and Jonas Savimbi, leader of the UNITA rebels.
In an earlier interview with the Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias, Bishop Camuenho said he intended to ask both parties in the conflict for an immediate cease-fire, the first step toward a return to peace.
