Portugal's presence in Guiné-Bissau through eleven years of intense guerrilla war was justified by the doctrine of ‘pluricontinentalim’. In this view concession to nationalist pressure in one part of the ‘indivisible state’ would lead inevitably to the collapse of the whole. The defence of Portuguese Guiné, therefore, was the price to be paid for the maintenance of the infinitely more valuable territories of Angola and Mozambique. While the Salazar regime was rigid in its adherence to this doctrine, some movement was detectable under his successor from 1968, Marcello Caetano. The governor-general in Guiné, General Spínola, was permitted to explore possibilities of negotiation. Politically insecure in the face of residual Salazarist power in the regime, however, Caetano abandoned this approach in 1972. This apparent loss of nerve would contribute to the overthrow of the Lisbon regime by its own military in 1974 – despite recently revealed secret talks between Lisbon and the Guinea nationalists on the very eve of the coup.

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At the end of June 1997, the mandate of the third United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM III) was completed with conditional success, and superseded by the more modestly manned and resourced Observation Mission in Angola (Missão de Observação das Nações Unidas em Angola – MONUA). The ‘draw-down’ of UNAVEM III marked the end of one period in the UN's somewhat chequered history of engagement in Angola. The completion of its mandate followed the apparent commitment on the part of UNITA (União Nacional para a Indepêndencia Total de Angola) to move ahead to the final implementation of the Lusaka Protocol of November 1994. By the terms of this protocol, UNITA was to demobilise the greater part of its army and integrate the remainder into the national armed forces (the FAA – Forças Armadas Angolanas). Already in April, UNITA had complied with a central part of the political requirements of the protocol by inaugurating a new coalition government of national unity with the ruling MPLA-PT (Movimento de Libertação de Angola – Partido Trabalhista).