By Justin Pearce BBC, Luanda

A rebel army which once controlled more than half of Angola will officially cease to exist by the end of the week.

Angolan army officers have been selecting 5,000 members of the Unita rebel movement to be incorporated into the Angolan Armed Forces, in accordance with the peace agreement signed in April.

Angola timeline

1975: Independence from Portugal Power struggle between Cuba-backed MPLA and Unita, backed by South Africa and the US 1992: Dos Santos wins presidential poll 1992 Savimbi rejects results 1995: First UN peacekeepers arrive 1998: Full-scale fighting resumes Feb 2002: Savimbi killed April 2002: Ceasefire signed

The process of integrating these men into the army is due to last from Monday to Friday.

On Saturday, the Unita soldiers not selected will formally be discharged.

But in practical terms, this process may not be as dramatic as the plan would suggest.

At the moment, all of the Unita soldiers and their families - over 300,000 people in total - are living in quartering camps around the country.

For most of these people, there is no immediate prospect of leaving.

The programmes which were promised to help Unita families to reintegrate into civilian life are still only being talked about.

Political polarisation

The camps will still be controlled internally by ex-Unita officers, even though overall responsibility now passes from the army to the government's reconciliation commission.

Most of Unita's weapons are by now meant to have been handed to the armed forces.

But there is no independent audit of this process, and the Unita camps do retain some weapons, supposedly for their own security.

The camps were set up under the peace accord

The quartering camps were meant to be temporary structures, but there are fears that they may end up becoming permanent settlements exclusively for Unita supporters, and thus perpetuate the political polarisation in the country.

The task of reconciliation is one area where the United Nations hopes it might be able to play a role.

The mandate of the UN mission in Angola expires on Monday, and in the coming weeks the Security Council will be discussing a new role for the UN in a political environment which has changed radically since the death of Jonas Savimbi.

With the government and Unita having pressed ahead with their own peace agreement, the UN is not expecting any major role in the demobilisation process.

But UN officials in Luanda are hopeful that it may play a role in human rights monitoring.