Recovering from war, Mozambican park again faces conflict

GORONGOSA NATIONAL PARK, Mozambique (AP) — A fragment of a bullet-pocked wall in this Mozambique wildlife reserve is a reminder of a civil war that ended in 1992.

Many of the 500 people working for the wildlife park back Renamo, the opposition, and some support Frelimo, the ruling party, though managers discourage any sensitive talk on the job.

Frelimo was a Marxist guerrilla movement when it took power, and Renamo rebels were backed by white-minority rulers in what was then Rhodesia, and in apartheid South Africa.

After post-war election losses, Renamo (the Portuguese acronym for Mozambican National Resistance) now wants more regional autonomy from Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front), a process that could require constitutional change.

European Union mediator Mario Raffaelli traveled to Gorongosa in October to try to meet Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama, who cancelled after alleging government troops launched an operation.

Carr, who signed a Gorongosa management deal with Mozambique in 2008 after a government invitation, has support from the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, at $2 million a year, and the Global Environment Facility, with a $7.5 million grant managed by the United Nations Development Programme.

Entreposto, a Portuguese business group that runs an adjacent hunting concession, said it wants Mozambique's government to add that land to the park, creating tourism opportunities and a wildlife corridor to the Zambezi River.