Ladies and Gentlemen

For many years our every-day-life has been marked by the sadness of war. A war that claimed lives, destroyed goods and consumed great part of our resources and energies.

Today we are on the eve of a historic happening. Angolans have for long yearned for the arrival of this moment of peace and of certainty in the future.

A new scenario is already glimmering in the horizon. We have started to feel the first beneficial effects of Peace, because it is already manifesting in its human dimension.

It is the members of separated families who are meeting again. The mother who recognises the son whom she believed lost. The wife who meets the husband again. Someone who learns that the brother is finally alive. Disagreed citizens who fought with arms in hand now hug each other and fraternise. In short: it is the reunion of the great Angolan family.

New prospects for all citizens in various fields of social, political, economic, cultural and sports life are thus opening up.

It is Peace! This simple word, with only five letters, is the essence of life for us Angolans, who have learned in four decades the value it conveys.

As you all know, the talks for the definitive close of the military conflict which so heavily hit our nation have reached a good ending.

Tomorrow the formal signing of the Luena memorandum will take place, which will allow us to say, with great joy, that war in Angola is over and Peace has come for ever.

Before the silence of guns, I am appealing to all Angolans without distinction to fully share the Peace.

For this to happen it is necessary that each of us and all of us be able to pardon and to forget, that is, to move away the feelings of hatred and revenge, which will never contribute for the construction of a worthier and fairer world for the Angolan People.

Each community, each family, each individual should cultivate serenity and constructive atittudes. It is imperative that each one look at the past with wisdom, with humbleness of someone willing to learn with the mistakes, respecting the other.

Those who indeed love peace have to know how to forgive and reconcile with the neighbour, thus contributing for a real, solid union of Angolans, not detrimental to the divergencies which some and others can express.

I am urging all to cultivate too, in their everyday practice, tolerance and respect for the difference of opinion and for the right to free party option.

We all should now on work for a united, solidary and mature Fatherland guided by the values of democracy and by the respect for Human Rights and free from adventurous or divsionist appeals.

We will together turn our eyes to the resolution of the grave and dramatic problems which have acummulated for centuries of colonialism and decades of armed conflict.

Dear Compatriots

Harmonisation of national life is indispensable for us to be broadly successful in the great challenges lying ahead of us. We will have to simultaneously deal with the physical reconstruction of the country, the traumas caused by the war and with the perfecting of the functioning of the democratic institutions.

It is the infrastructures of transports, communications and energy that need to be rehabilitated in all quarters. Cities, municipalities, villages and communes that lack repairs and modernisation. It is the industrial and agricultural production that has to be relaunched so to have more employment, more wealth and major availability of material goods for the population. It is the credit financial institutions that have to be improved and reach major expansion. It is the health, medical assistance and the creation and improvement of hospitals and health posts that require our attention in a way to fight disease, particularly the endemics.

Finally, it is the education and the training of our youth that need to be strengthened, in order that we can have new generations duely prepared to face up the challenges of the new times. It is the arrangements for free and fair, transparent elections that we have to secure for the normalisation of our democratic process.

But above all we have the urgent duty of assisting with the most elementary goods our compatriots who are in a situation of extreme shortage. They are tasks which are up to me, which are up to the Government and also to each Angolan regardless of their party filiation or party-political sympathy.

The suffering of millions of displaced persons and thousands of orphan children, among other reasons, is more than sufficient to determine the degree of urgency which we have in overcoming distrusts and and contradictions from the past, to better direct our forces to the handling of national needs.

The advent of Peace and ongoing reconciliation increases the responsibilities of all Angolans, who should come to the height of this moment, so as not to miss this great chance, which we have well deserved for the efforts and sacrifices consented.

The President of the Republic, invested in his constitutional powers, is the guarantee of peace. In this capacity I will do everything for the compromises assumed to be respected and for all Angolans to feel citizens of the same Fatherland in which each one can freely express their ideas and fullydevelop their personality.

I will devote a special attention to the conclusion of the implementation of the Lusaka Protocol.

May the road for Peace and reconciliation now started in Angola serve as example and encouraging to a peaceful resolution of armed conflicts which still last in other parts of Africa and of the world.

A homage to all those who sacrificed and perished for the cause of peace.

LONG LIVE PEACE AND NATIONAL RECONCILIATION

LONG LIVE ANGOLA!