The fate of displaced persons in Angola continued to be of grave concern to the ICRC during the first weeks of the new year, all the more so as its efforts to provide food aid to the victims of the conflict situation were seriously hindered by the danger to which transport is exposed and by the impossibility of obtaining the authorities' agreement to allow the ICRC to work according to its customary procedure. The ICRC put forward concrete proposals both to the Government (in particular during the mission by the ICRC delegate-general for Africa, at the end of 1983) and to the directors of the “Angolan Red Cross”, with a view to resuming its normal assistance programmes. Unfortunately, these proposals had not produced any result by the end of February.