Angolan ceasefire signed

The signing was described as a "historic moment"

Angola's army has signed a ceasefire agreement with the Unita rebel movement aimed at ending 26 years of civil war.

The accord - signed by the commanders of the Angolan armed forces and Unita's rebel army - marks the culmination of talks that began after government forces killed Unita leader Jonas Savimbi six weeks ago.

The two signatories embraced at the ceremony

The ceasefire formally ends a civil war that has raged since Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975.

Unita chief of staff General Geraldo Abreu Kamorteiro and the head of Angola's armed forces, General Armando Da Cruz Neto, signed the agreement at a small white table in the Angolan parliament building.

Then the two men embraced.

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and Ibrahaim Gambari, special representative of the United Nations in Angola, were both present at the ceremony.

Mr Gambari said it was a historic moment and he promised the UN would continue its support for Angola's peace plan.

The peace agreement comes after two weeks of talks between the rival armies, who on Saturday approved a plan for the demobilisation of 50,000 Unita troops.

Challenges ahead

Those soldiers will now be absorbed into the Angolan army and police.

General Kamorteiro said the presence at the ceremony of his top field commanders was "clear evidence of Unita's determination to proceed with its total and definitive demilitarization," the French news agency AFP reported.

General Armando Da Cruz Neto, said it was "imperative" for his troops "to undertake this great task - to restore peace".

The war is over and peace has come back for good

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos

"With your help, we will start the reunion of the Angolan family," he told an estimated 4,000 people at the formal ceremony to mark the signing.

These included heads of state and representatives from neighbouring countries and the United Nations as well as nominees from the US, Russia and Portugal.

The latter three countries formed the "troika" originally formed to observe the 1994 Lusaka peace accords, which fell apart in 1998.

All the speakers at the ceremony mentioned the huge challenges ahead for Angola - the merging of Unita soldiers into the Angolan army and police among them.

They spoke of a huge resettlement programme for the millions of displaced Angolans and efforts to rebuild the war-ravaged country.

President dos Santos declared the war to be over and promised that free elections would be held.

Savimbi's role

Previous peace efforts in Angola have failed, but the BBC's Justin Pearce in Luanda says most Angolans are optimistic that this latest plan will work.

Some are encouraged by the fact that the process was conducted entirely by Angolans themselves, rather than by foreign mediators.

The Angolan president declared the war over

Others believe that Jonas Savimbi was the principal driving force behind the war and that with him now dead the chances of peace are better than ever before.

But Unita's interim leader, General Paulo Lukamba Gato, told the BBC that Savimbi himself had taken the decision to enter into negotiations with the government in December, two months before he died.

Many observers say Unita's army has been all but destroyed in the last few months, but General Gato insisted that Unita could have continued fighting had it wanted to but had decided that peace was the better option.