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Secure Peace Within Angola By Deploying UN Peacekeepers

The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) welcomes President Jose Eduardo dos Santos's call for the prompt dispatching of 7,000 United Nations peace-keepers to Angola (''Angola Needs the World's Help in Making Peace Triumph,'' Jan. 25).

The rapid deployment of UN peacekeepers is critical to the successful implementation of the Lusaka Protocol signed Nov. 20, 1994. But while their deployment is a necessary condition for peace, it is not sufficient. We, Angolans ourselves, must be prepared to guarantee a future of peace.

Today, the cease-fire is generally holding. However, military tension continues. UNITA, the government of Angola, the UN, and the observers of the peace process are faced with the challenge of giving real meaning to the Lusaka Protocol, whose only value lies in our ability to meet its obligations.

There is no question that the United States has a history with Angola, and an obligation to help us complete the peace process. UNITA believes that several steps need to be taken immediately to ensure the irreversibility of the peace process, such as the withdrawal of all foreign military personnel, the termination of military acquisitions by all parties, and the deployment of UN monitors in hostile areas. UNITA, the government, and civil society have the responsibility to make the peace process work. The problem now is one of mutual trust. The achievement of a durable peace must go via the road to democracy.

Jardo Muekalia

Washington

UNITA representative to the US

Smithsonian showed poor taste

The editorial ''A Lesson From Enola Gay,'' Feb. 1, should not be about whether or not the Smithsonian Institution should ''censor itself.'' The Enola Gay and the atom bombs it delivered hastened the end of the war. That is why President Truman made the decision to drop atom bombs. Whether he thereby expected to save 60,000 or 100,000 American lives is not decisive; many American lives would be, and were, saved.

I doubt whether anyone knew how devastating the bombs would be. But then, more Japanese lives were lost in our final firebombing of Japanese cities than from either atom bomb, and I have seen no second thought about this. The Smithsonian management showed poor judgment in trying to make an exhibit of the 50th anniversary of this revolutionary airborne military system into a morality play about nuclear weapons or civilian targets in wartime.

S. Peter Karlow

Atherton, Calif.