UN General Assembly
1998

basis of fairness and justice is the best means for the people in the territory to choose their own destiny. We support the continuation of United Nations and OAU joint efforts. We would also like to call the attention of the international community to the problem of Somalia. Although we recognize that the parties to the conflict have the primary responsibility for finding a peaceful solution, we believe this will be possible only with the support of the United Nations. We regret the lack of significant progress in the Middle East peace process. Angola encourages the parties to comply with the commitments made under the Oslo agreement. We continue to defend the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and we advocate a rapid and fair resolution of the issues of the occupied Arab territories, including Palestine, which should take into account the interests of all the peoples in the region. 13 We believe that this will ease the tensions in Arab-Israeli relations. The situation in East Timor, a territory with which Angola shares linguistic links and a common anti-colonial