Lisbon - Angolan rebels said on Thursday that a letter purportedly from their leader Jonas Savimbi offering the government an immediate ceasefire and a return to peace talks was a fake.
"There is no such letter. It's a fake, a propaganda trick," said Carlos Morgado, a Unita spokesperson in Lisbon.
Savimbi allegedly made the peace overture in a signed letter to Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported on Thursday. Lusa said it had been shown the letter by Angolan government officials in Luanda.
According to Lusa, Savimbi said in the letter that a ceasefire would foster a climate of mutual trust, permitting a negotiated end to the war which the foes have waged in the former Portuguese colony for most of the past 20 years.
But Morgado rejected the report as "a typical propaganda tactic by the government to divert attention from its military losses".
The letter was dated September 27, Lusa said. It did not say how the letter was delivered to Dos Santos.
The army launched a massive counter-offensive against rebel positions three weeks ago, seeking to roll back Unita's gains in recent months which have given the group control of about 70 percent of the country. It reportedly crushed a key rebel stronghold in the central highlands and is moving on other rebels bastions in the area about 500km south-east of Luanda.
On Thursday the Angolan government welcomed an announcement by the world's biggest diamond producer that it has placed an embargo on the purchase of diamonds from Angola by all its offices.
De Beers said on Tuesday the move was taken to help prevent Unita from financing its war against the Angolan government with the proceeds of diamond sales. It also planned to shut down its buying offices in Angola.
The company's managing director, Gary Ralfe, announced the decision in London, saying the company shared "the world's deep concern over the continued suffering of the people of Angola" as a result of civil war. De Beers was perturbed that "some of the funds which had fuelled the war had been derived from the illegal sale of diamonds by Unita", he said.
De Beers, which controls the international diamond market through its Central Selling Organisation in London, added it had never bought diamonds from Unita.
De Beers said it also withdrew its buyers from Angola a year ago. The sole exception to the embargo would be diamonds De Beers is contractually obliged to buy from SDM, a joint-venture mining operation controlled by the Angolan government and Australian mining company Ashton.
The Angolan government diamond body Endiama estimated in August that illegal trafficking had amounted to $140 million (R850 million) since January. - Sapa-AFP