The leader of Angola's rebel movement has been accused of personally ordering the shooting down of two United Nations planes.

A defector from the Unita movement, General Jacinto Bandua, made the accusation against Jonas Savimbi in a videotaped interview shown to the Security Council.

Another defector said Unita rebels had standing orders to shoot down any aircraft flying over territory held by the group.

The second defector also said rebels were ordered to destroy every trace of human remains.

All 23 people on board the UN-chartered planes died when they were shot down on 26 December 1998 and 2 January 1999.

General Bandua said the man who shot down the first UN plane with a surface-to-air missile had been promoted within Unita shortly after the attack.

Last November, rebels insisted crew members from one of the planes were alive and being held captive.

Assessing the report

Canadian Ambassador Robert Fowler, who chairs the UN sanctions committee on Angola's Unita rebels presented the videotaped evidence to the UN Security Council on Tuesday.

He said the former guerrillas, now members of the Angolan army, did not appear to be speaking under duress or following orders given by the government.

Mr Fowler, who was present for the interviews, said he hoped the information about the crash could be corroborated.

In the videotaped interview one of the former rebels said: "Savimbi issued orders ... to shoot down any aircraft of the United Nations."

UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said Mr Fowler's report was still being assessed but it was not yet known if the organisation would have any legal recourse in the light of the accusations.

Sanctions campaign

Mr Fowler has led the campaign to cut off Unita's source of funding their war - largely cash raised from the sales of diamonds.

He also showed the Security Council video footage his team had collected during a recent visit to Angola of heavy weaponry captured from Unita.

In the videotaped interviews shown to the Security Council, former rebels gave detailed accounts of exactly how the lucrative illegal trade in guns and fuel for diamonds operates.

The UN has spent millions of dollars trying to bring peace. But last year, the UN peacekeeping force withdrew after renewed fighting between the Angolan Government forces and Unita.

In recent months the civil war has spilled across the borders into Namibia and Zambia.

Earlier this week Unita was blamed for the massacre of up to 150 civilians in Chicandula, a small village in the east of Bie province.