IF ANGOLA were any other country in the world, the United Nations would be giving itself a big and very public pat on the back this week.
Yesterday, after 20 years of civil war and hundreds of thousands of deaths, soldiers of the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) were to begin turning them selves in at UN camps, for eventual integration into the government army. Today Unita's inner council begins debating whether to accept cabinet seats in a government of national unity.
The last war in southern Africa could soon be a forgotten chapter in world history, and the UN could be forgiven for blowing its dented trumpet a little.
But the United Nations has been here before with Angola the champagne remains on ice.
Three years ago Angola was halfway through its first multiparty elections, supervised by a massive UN peacekeeping mission, when Unita decided it disliked the way the result was shaping up. The ceasefire broke down and Unita fighters seized large chunks of the countryside, capturing the central city of Huambo in a siege that killed thousands of civilians.
In reply the government of the once Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) embarked on a massive arms buying splurge that enabled it to drive Unita back into the bush, after particularly heavy fighting in and around Cuito and once again Huambo.
Flushed with success, the government's generals were reluctant to be reined in, while Unita signalled that it was still able and willing to launch guerrilla attacks from the remote interior.
The UN began patiently picking up the pieces, but despite a peace deal signed between President Eduardo dos Santos and the Unita leader, Dr Jonas Savimbi, last March, sporadic fighting continued in many outlying districts, often on a large scale.
In November government troops were accused of launching a series of attacks on Unita held areas in the northern provinces, and Unita in turn withdrew from its commitment to "quarter" its fighters in UN camps.
Following strong pressure from Washington, Mr dos Santos has in recent days moved swiftly to put his government back on side.
Last week the infamous rapid reaction police known as the "ninjas" were withdrawn to barracks. The South African mercenary firm, Executive Outcomes, which helped engineer the government's military victory, had its contract terminated abruptly and last week 188 of its employees were flown home.
The next move is up to Unita this makes it difficult to predict. Few believe that Unita could deliver on a promise to "quarter" 20,000 fighters by next Saturday, even if it wanted to.
And anything less than a major flood of fighters into the camps will raise suspicions that Unita is still keen to maintain a substantial force in the field. Mr Alioune Blondin Beye, the UN envoy who last year proclaimed peace in Angola, has learned to be more circumspect in his pronouncements.
"By the end of the week we'll see whether the commitment will be met or not," he said yesterday. Peace will not be assured until Mr Savimbi is willing to abdicate his de facto kingdom in the bush and come to Luanda. And that, says Mr Beye, is still a long way off.
Ironically, the protracted nature of Angola's civil war stems not from a curse but from a blessing. The struggle between Unita and the MPLA, which began while both were fighting Portuguese colonialism in the early 1970s, was initially based on regional and ethnic divisions.
The MPLA, which ended up in control of Luanda, accepted Soviet and Cuban patronage. Despite a Maoist background and an oft professed hatred of whites, Mr Savimbi won the financial and military backing of the US and South Africa. Angola duly became one of the hottest spots in the Cold War.
But those who expected peace to come with the demise of apartheid and the Soviet Union were disappointed the Angolans found means of their own to carry on the struggle.
In recent years Unita began smuggling large quantities of diamonds from the northern provinces into neighbouring Zaire, while the government was able to counter Unita's arms build up by bartering away the country's substantial oil production, worth over 3 billion a year.
While over 1.5 million of its 10 million citizens are displaced and dependent on UN food supplies and international aid Ireland's Concern, Goal and Trocaire are all active Angola is thought to possess enough natural wealth to regenerate itself from its own resources. All it lacks is peace.