1 Jonas Savimbi emerged from the curtained back seat of a Mercedes limousine, looking more like a 1970s nightclub singer than the shadowy 'Commandante' who has led one of the oldest guerrilla movements in existence.
2 Staging the first congress of UNITA in five years in Bailundo, a small bombed-out town where his bedraggled fighters are now humbly headquartered, Savimbi wore a white double-breasted blazer, an open black shirt with wide collars, a gold bracelet and two gold rings.
3 An ebony walking stick topped by a silver eagle's head completed the ensemble as Savimbi strode smartly through a phalanx of bodyguards, heavily armed with cartridge belts slung over their shoulders and machine guns at their hips.
4 The congress could have been called the 'Savimbi Coming Out Show.'
5 Savimbi, once lionized by conservatives worldwide as an anti-communist freedom fighter, used the occasion to end a mysterious self-imposed seclusion that began when his forces suffered a series of military defeats last year.
6 If UNITA -- the Portuguese acronym for the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola -- has lost its 20-year civil war against the government, somebody has apparently forgotten to tell its leader.
7 'This is merely one corner in a long journey,' Savimbi told delegates during a rambling 2 1/2-hour opening address that was part speech, part pep talk and part seminar.
8 'Are we tired? We are not tired. If someone is tired, that means they are the loser. UNITA is still in the race,' he said, standing in a shabby school hall decorated with crudely painted slogans and the black-bordered portraits of four party leaders killed by the government.
9 The massive security seemed to confirm his rumored fear of assassination. But Savimbi laughed off reports that he was dead, crippled, insane or depressed.
10 'Do I look paralyzed?' he said to his audience, standing up theatrically. 'No. I am here.'
11 It is still not clear why Savimbi dropped from sight last year. UNITA journalists say he simply had nothing to say. Another theory is that Savimbi could not bear to answer questions while his troops were fast losing ground to the government.
12 The idea of a holding a weeklong party congress in this semi-derelict town without electricity or running water borders on the absurd. UNITA retreated here in November after losing Huambo, its 'capital' and Angola's second-largest city, to the government.
13 But somehow Savimbi and UNITA brought together 1,000 delegates and plastered the town with pictures of Savimbi's goateed face and slogans such as 'Long Live a Verifiable Peace.'
14 A UNITA car harangued the impoverished populace through loudspeakers to 'Run, don't walk,' to see Savimbi. Armed soldiers -- some in their teens -- kept members of the crowd in respectful silence as they waited hours for Savimbi to show up.
15 A handful of foreign journalists were flown to the town's grass airstrip for the occasion, and Savimbi granted one of his infrequent interviews, in which he gave his qualified endorsement to a U.N.-brokered peace deal.
16 Despite the upbeat rhetoric, there is no doubt UNITA has fallen on hard times.
17 In the past year, the rebels were routed by government forces from the oil-producing area around Soya, their bloody siege of Cuito was broken, and their headquarters in Huambo overrun. Savimbi and an estimated 60,000 UNITA supporters retreated to the Bailundo region in Angola's central highlands.
18 On Nov. 20, a few days after losing Huambo, a UNITA representative signed the peace accord with the Luanda government.
19 Savimbi did not show up at the signing and was circumspect about his feelings about the treaty, which calls for disengagement and demobilization on both sides, the introduction of 7,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops, and completion of a presidential runoff election canceled in 1992.
20 The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday unanimously approved sending the peacekeepers in stages to make sure that the peace accord holds and the U.N. forces do not get caught in renewed fighting.
21 In the interview on Wednesday, Savimbi said the last two peace agreements with the government had 'flopped,' and he could not be sure of this one either.
22 'This is why I am cautious, but I am prepared to endorse it,' he said.
23 But he also warned that UNITA has the capacity to fight on if necessary.
24 'Go around to all the wars of liberation. Sometimes people were isolated. Sometimes they were even frustrated,' he said. 'But if they want really to fight, then they fight on.'
25 UNITA claimed fraud after losing the first round of the 1992 vote, and Angola's civil war, which first broke out in 1975 after independence from Portugal, erupted again.
26 An estimated 100,000 people have died in the past two years, as UNITA seized two-thirds of the country's territory and then gradually lost it to government troops assisted by South African mercenaries.
27 Although most of Angola's population is desperately poor, the country is rich enough to sustain a long war. The government uses its dlrs 3 billion in annual oil revenues to lavish weapons on the army, and UNITA finances its effort with diamonds mined from areas it controls.

Jonas Savimbi emerged from the curtained back seat of a Mercedes limousine , looking more like a 1970s nightclub singer than the shadowy " Commandante " who has led one of the oldest guerrilla movements in existence .
oldest guerrilla movements
to which movement does this refer?