The remarks by Christopher Dell were published in the Jornal de Angola as dos Santos was preparing for a visit to the White House on Wednesday for talks with President George W Bush on the state of democracy in Angola and oil.
Dell said "it is important to have a date, any date, because without a date, even a tentative one, we cannot have a political process. There will not be that dynamic that is at the heart of every democratic system." But he added in the interview published in Portuguese that "from a political standpoint, as well as for national reconciliation and the completion of the peace process, it is necessary that elections be held in Angola in the next two years."
Dos Santos has been under pressure from the opposition to set a date for new elections as part of the peace process that ended a brutal 27-year civil war in 2002 and thought to have claimed up to 1,5-million lives.
The last general elections in Angola took place in September 1992 and temporarily halted the war, but fighting resumed and a second round of voting never took place.
Angola has been torn by war for much of the last three decades, winning independence from Portugal in 1975 but sliding deeper into chaos as a proxy Cold War was fought in the southern African country.
The US backed rebel leader Jonas Savimbi while Cuba and the Soviet Union sided with the governing Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) led by Agostinho Neto.
Neto died in 1979, paving the way for dos Santos' ascendancy.
There was a brief respite from fighting with the installation of a unity government in 1997 but serious fighting broke out a year later, rendering hundreds of thousands homeless.
Angolan rebels and the government reached a peace accord in April 2002 following the death of Savimbi.
As it seeks to overcome the ravages of war, Angola is taking flight as one of the continent's top oil producers and the third-largest trading partner of the United States in sub-Saharan Africa largely because of its petroleum exports Dos Santos, 61, who has ruled Angola for 25 years, will be making his fourth visit to Washington at a time when the US is seeking to secure its energy needs from potential partners like Angola.
In his published remarks, Dell took pains to explain that Washington was not pushing Luanda into holding quick elections, saying that the timetable must "reflect Angola's realities and the need to organise a process that is accepted by all as free and fair."
"It's important that there be elections... and I repeat, when it is convenient for the government. But there must be elections so as to end the Lusaka process" that brought an end to the war, Dell said.
He cited a 2001 study by a group of non-governmental organisations and a government ministry that concluded that a period of 18 months was needed to organise elections in Angola.
"The question is, when do we launch this period of 18 or 24 months," Dell said, adding that the US administration was prepared to offer technical and financial support to organise the elections. - Sapa-AFP
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