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Wednesday, June 26, 2002 - Web posted at 8:08:56 am GMT

LUANDA, June 25 (AFP) - Advocates for a campaign to find people who disappeared during Angola's 27-year civil war Tuesday gave military authorities a first list of 3,000 names of missing people.

The document was the first of its kind since an April 4 ceasefire halted the fighting, and was created through a series of public meetings in Luanda and the central city of Huambo though a campaign called "Ponto de reencontro" (Point of Reunion).

The list was given to the Joint Military Commission, which includes officials from the army and the former rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), charged with overseeing the ceasefire.

The commission has a mandate to find missing people in the camps where 84,160 former UNITA fighters and 256,900 of their relatives -- including 162,000 children -- are gathered.

Humanitarian groups also received a copy of the list.

A second list of about 1,000 missing people, collected in Luanda and the central city of Benguela, should be released soon, said Luis Domingo, an official with Ponto de Reecontro. - Nampa-AFP

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