LISBON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Cuba has sent advisers to Angola, where it once had thousands of troops, to help the former Marxist government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos in its fight against UNITA rebels, a Portuguese newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Diario de Noticias said that up to 200 advisers, including some senior military officials, were believed to be in Luanda. It gave no source for its report and did not say when the advisers had arrived.
Some Cuban officials were also reported to be in the central highland town of Malanje, which has been under attack for weeks by UNITA troops, the newspaper said.
Cuba backed dos Santos' Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) for some 15 years during the first Angolan civil war, which started before the country's independence from Portugal in 1975.
A first peace treaty between the MPLA and UNITA, once backed by the United States and South Africa, broke down after rebel chief Jonas Savimbi refused to accept the results of 1992 elections in which dos Santos was elected president.
Another United Nations-brokered truce was achieved in 1994, but that collapsed shortly before Christmas last year, plunging the oil and diamond-rich country back into civil war.
05:22 01-19-99
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