"We welcome the initiative and fully support the UN Secretary General's call for an immediate ceasefire," the Lusa said in a statement to the Lusa.
In this way the political leadership of the FLEC announced that it has declared "a temporary and provisional ceasefire in order to facilitate the fight against the coronavirus".
This ceasefire is expected to last four weeks "from 8pm on Monday 13 April".
In a statement, signed by FLEC spokesman Jean Claude Nzita, the secessionists also called on UN Secretary General António Guterres to "intervene in the peaceful resolution of the conflict in Cabinda".
At the same time, the FLEC called on President João Lourenço "to agree to dialogue in order to resolve the Cabinda problem peacefully" and urged the Armed Forces General Staff to "respond to the initiative of the Cabindan Armed Forces with a similar gesture".
FLEC, through its "armed arm", the CTF, fights for the independence of the territory claiming that the enclave was a Portuguese protectorate, as established in the Treaty of Simulambuco, signed in 1885, and not an integral part of Angolan territory.
Created in 1963, the independence organisation split and multiplied into different, ephemeral factions, with the FLEC/FAC remaining the only movement claiming to maintain an 'armed resistance' against the Luanda administration.
