A CURIOUS photograph hangs on the wall at Dr Jonas Savimbi's remote head quarters in Bailundo, Angola. It captures a meeting between the UNITA rebel leader and Mr Nelson Mandela in South Africa early last year, shortly after Dr Savimbi emerged from the bush to sign a peace deal with the government he has fought for 20 years.

Both men were presumably photo shaking hands, as is customary, but this picture shows both men turning away from each other, ruefully. In the foreground Mr Mandela might almost be shaking his head. In the background Dr Savimbi is wearing a white suit with shockingly wide pointed lapels, with an even wider shirt collar spread over it.

At the time Dr Savimbi had just reappeared in public after more than a year of complete invisibility it was widely rumoured that he had been killed by government bombing. He looks as if he has just emerged through some time warp from 1975, when Angola's civil war began.

The photograph suggests a parting of ways, the new Africa of Mr Mandela turning away from the war lordism which scarred the continent in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. And indeed after the picture was taken Dr Savimbi returned to the bush and remains there still, surrounded by his soldiers, so that Angola's peace is still no more than a ceasefire.

It seems that every time Angola's conflict is on the point of burning itself out, new factors arise to give fresh fuel to the fighting.

THE struggle began in the Portuguese colonial period, when the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) were born as rival independence movements. Divided on regional and ethnic lines, the two movements continued to fight each other after the Portuguese left in 1975.

The MPLA soon adopted a Marxist stance and accepted Soviet and Cuban backing. UNITA and other early rebel movements were quickly adopted by the west, and received funding from the United States and direct military backing from apartheid South Africa.

By 1991, however, the Cold War was over and apartheid was on the way out, so Angola's rival powers agreed to a UN sponsored election that would end their "proxy" war. It was not to be. Stung by preliminary results which showed he was losing badly, Dr Savimbi repudiated the elections in late 1992.

UNITA quickly seized nearly two thirds of the country, including the key cities of Huambo and Cuito. Tens of thousands of civilians are believed to have died in UNITA's bombardment of these two cities, and in the government's successful counter attacks of 1994.

The fighting the last conventional campaign in Africa effectively ended in November 1994( when UNITA reluctantly signed the Lusaka peace accords in the face of a relentless government advance. The accord envisaged the disengagement and eventual "quartering" of UNITA troops in UN monitored camps, and the formation of a UNITA MPLA interim government to pave the way for new elections.

The latest UN mission involves nearly 7,000 peacekeepers and is entitled UNAVEM 3, the successor to the hapless first and second UN Verification Missions in Angola. In Luanda, cynical Angolans say they hope their children don't live to see UNAVEM 13.

Now that the foreign distractions have gone, Angola's stand off is sustained solely by the quest for power and wealth. Diplomats in Luanda say Dr Savimbi is a proud and ambitious man who has never given up the idea of becoming president. As second fiddle in an internationally backed coalition he would probably have only token power.

Although he has now discarded his trademark fatigues, Dr Savimbi remains first and foremost a soldier, one senior UN officer remarked. His army is his power base, so it is hardly surprising if he is slow to hand it over.

UNITA has been able to survive in recent years because it still controls many diamond producing areas in north and central Angola. The ceasefire has not halted digging on UNITA's side, and local government commanders are also believed to be doing well.

So sensitive is this issue that the diamond provinces of Lunda Norte and Lunda Sul have been left out of the UN mediated demobilisation plan. Angola's President, Mr Eduardo dos Santos told The Irish Times that the Lundas were a special problem, and he believed a special commission would be needed to resolve it.

Even where demobilisation is supposed to be taking place the process is proving unacceptably slow.

Most diplomats in Luanda believe that Dr Savimbi now sees peace as both desirable and inevitable, but there are still worries that he will drag out the process.

In the meantime, nobody doubts that UNITA is capable of surviving indefinitely as a guerrilla army in its south central heartland, and there jaw still lingering worries that Dr Savimbi might, in the end, opt for the tactics he knows best.

THESE doubts aside, there are many reasons to be optimistic about Angola. The malnutrition and disease which killed so many of the war's hundreds of thousands of victims are now largely under control, thanks to an unsung effort by the international aid community.

According to Ms Judith Nyhan of Concern Angola, the situation in the shattered cities of Huambo and Cuito is new stable. GOAL which has programmes in Luanda and northern Angola, reports serious health and nutrition problems in newly accessible outlying areas. But, according to GOAL's field director, Ms Angela Kerrigan, the situation cannot be classed as an emergency.

A peaceful Angola could be one of the wealthiest countries in Africa. Not only does it have existing diamond fields worth $270 million in 1992, but the country's offshore oil revenues are officially worth $3.8 billion a year and could be much higher.

Onshore mineral resources remain largely undeveloped because of the fighting. These include more oil, the world's biggest diamond pipe and large deposits of iron and other metals. Before the war Angola produced a quarter of the world's coffee and the highlands around Huambo were known as the granary of Africa. Angola, the cliche goes, has enough resources to rehabilitate itself.

And the picture on Dr Savimbi's wall has more than one meaning. The ANC may have helped Angola's government to fight UNITA and its apartheid allies, but diplomats report that Dr Savimbi holds Mr Mandela in very high regard. A personal intervention by Mr Mandela could be the only thing that would persuade Dr Savimbi to come in from the bush.

Such an intervention is now on the cards South Africa's Foreign Minister, Mr Alfred Nzo, travelled to Angola this week to prepare the way for a possible visit by Mr Mandela himself.