GoG News: Angola's pre-election civilian disarmament drive to run through August - Interior Minister
Luanda, March 6 (Lusa) - Angola's campaign to disarm civilians ahead of the country's upcoming post-civil war legislative elections will take place in four phases through August, according to Interior Minister Roberto Leal Monteiro.
Monteiro, in a speech Wednesday to a disarmament conference in Luanda, said the campaign would focus primarily on "delinquents, ex-soldiers and -police, security companies, self-defense organizations and other armed civilians".
Collected obsolete weapons would be destroyed, while others would be recycled to lawful defense and security forces, the minister said, adding that the new campaign launched Wednesday followed the collection of some 200,000 arms by authorities since 1999.
"The implementation of this plan reflects the government's political will to carry out this task in a transparent manner with the wide participation of civil society", he said.
The four-phase drive, he added, would begin with a public awareness campaign running from March through June.
The voluntary surrender of illegal arms would take place between April and June, followed by coercive disarmament in July and a control period in August, he said.
The country's first elections since the end of the civil war in 2002, legislative polls, are expected in September.
The government has issued no estimate of the number of weapons still in civilian hands, but local media have said private security firms have some 20,000 military-style arms.
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