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Angolan president makes U-turn
04/11/2003 23:59 - (SA)
Luanda - Longtime Angolan leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos on Tuesday said he might stand in Angola's next presidential elections, despite having vowed two years ago that he wanted to leave office.
"The question of the candidacy of the citizen Jose Eduardo dos Santos is an open question within the party," he told reporters, referring to the ruling People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
In 2001, Dos Santos said he would leave office at the next general elections in the oil-rich southwestern African nation that is emerging from decades of civil war.
No date has yet been set for the elections, but the 61-year-old former guerrilla fighter who has been in power since 1979 said last week that conditions would be ripe within two years.
Dos Santos's term of office, as well as that of the parliament elected in 1992, expired in 1996.
Angola's civil war, which came to an end in April last year after claiming some half a million lives since it was launched in 1975, derailed the electoral process in the former Portuguese colony.
- AFP
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