The President of the Republic, Filipe Nyusi, said today that a future pension program for the former guerrillas of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the main opposition party, is "the bill" that the country must pay for "sustainable peace".

"The peace bill must be sustained, we have been working to mobilize more support from our partners," to find solutions that make it possible to pay pensions to former Renamo guerrillas, Nyusi said.

The Mozambican head of state was speaking at the conference "Silencing the Guns in Africa in 2030", held in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, by the UK's Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House).

Quoted by Lusa, the President of the Republic pointed out that there is a consensus in the country that the 5,221 armed men of the main opposition party, of whom more than 91% have already been demobilized, should have a source of support, receiving pensions, despite not having paid into the social security system.

Filipe Nyusi said that the Mozambican state is working with international partners to finance the first five years of benefit payments to the former guerrillas, so that the Mozambican authorities can later assume this responsibility.

The transfer of a monthly payment is one stage in the process of reintegration and reconciliation with the former guerrillas, which will follow the conclusion of the disarmament and demobilization currently underway, Nyusi continued.

"We are working to close the last Renamo base this year and focus our action on the process of reintegration and national reconciliation, including the institutionalization of pensions," he said.

Filipe Nyusi noted that progress in the implementation of Renamo's Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) process is the result of honest dialogue and trust between the leaderships of the two parties, through a methodology that he described as "ownership by Mozambicans of the negotiation process".

The director of Chatham House's Africa Program, Alex Vines, pointed to Filipe Nyusi's pragmatism as one of the keys to the progress made in the peace process with Renamo.

"The President is an engineer by training and looks for solutions to problems," he said.

This realistic approach, he continued, led Filipe Nyusi to favor direct contacts with the Renamo leadership and to bet on more effective solutions.

Of the 5,221 armed men of the main opposition party, around 4,700 have already been demobilized, some of whom have been incorporated into the Mozambican Defence and Security Forces, with the last of the movement's main bases still to be closed.

Last week, Renamo called the closure of the last base of the party's armed wing "an unknown", following the alleged murder of a former military chief of the organization.

"This is beginning to be an unknown: they are murdering our demobilized members," said José Manteigas, the party's spokesman, during a press conference in Maputo, where he denounced the alleged murder of a delegate and demobilized member in the center of the country.

On the other hand, the main opposition party considered the payment of pensions to its men to be essential for a definitive peace in the country.