Dhlakama extends Renamo truce for two months

Dhlakama extends Renamo truce for two months
Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the opposition party Renamo, on 3 March announced a further two-month extension of the truce his forces have been observing since late December. Speaking from a Renamo base in the central district of Gorongosa, Dhlakama declared “as from zero hours tomorrow, 4 March, a new truce takes effect, lasting until 4 May”.
Initially, the truce was only for a week, beginning on 27 December. Dhlakama announced the truce after phone conversations with President Filipe Nyusi. In early January the truce was extended by a further two months, to 4 March.

Dhlakama confirmed that he remains in regular phone contact with President Nyusi, and guaranteed that the peace talks “are on a good path”. He also announced that a new figure “of recognised merit” internationally will join the “contact group” announced by President Nyusi on 1 March. Dhlakama did not announce the name of this figure.
The “contact group” consists of seven ambassadors resident in Maputo, and its co-chairs are Swiss ambassador Mirko Manzani and US ambassador Dean Pittman. The statement from President Nyusi’s office announcing the creation of the contact group said it “will provide coordinated financial and technical assistance, and carry out other tasks as indicated in their terms of reference”.
This assistance is to the two working groups that President Nysui and Dhlakama have set up, one dealing with decentralisation and the other on military questions.

President Nyusi announced that he and Dhlakama had agreed that the two groups can begin working “because the Mozambican people are in a hurry to live definitively in peace”.

Source: AIM

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