UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- A 25-member U.N. search team arrived on Monday at the site of a second U.N. plane crash near the UNITA rebel stronghold of Bailundo, Angola, the United Nations said.

Spokesman Fred Eckhard had no details but said the team was expected to return to Luanda late on Monday.

UNITA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, said last week there were no survivors among the nine passengers and crew that crashed in the central highlands of the southwest African country.

"We're waiting for further information from the search team as to what they might have seen at the site," Eckhard said.

Two U.N.-chartered Hercules C-130 transport planes crashed, presumably shot down, with a total of 23 passengers and crew. One crashed on December 26, the other on January 2.

A U.N. rescue team found no survivors in the first crash after delays in reaching the site because both the UNITA and the Angolan government refused to stop fighting and clear the way for the U.N. search teams.

UNITA on Monday said it opposed the withdrawal of the United Nations from Angola but said the world body had to be more even-handed.

In a statement released in Lisbon, UNITA said it would be "futile" for the United Nations, which is reassessing its role in the war-torn southwest African country, to leave a residual mission in the capital, Luanda.

It also warned the United Nations against simply seeking to maintain its humanitarian effort, saying that the aid would end up "enriching the leaders of the Luanda regime."

U.N. peacekeepers were overseeing a now-shattered 1994 accord between UNITA and the government. Most U.N. resolutions have faulted UNITA for not honoring the accord, saying it did not disarm its fighters and refused to allow a national administration in the territories it controls.

The 1994 accord nearly stopped a civil war for close to four years but in the last month fighting has resumed.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommended that the U.N. Observer Mission in Angola, known as MONUA, be closed down by March 20 but the Security Council wants to keep a small political and military operation in the country.

"The U.N. could play a useful role in the search for a solution to the Angolan conflict," UNITA said in the statement, drawn up after a meeting of its leaders in Bailundo, central Angola, Sunday.

"Nevertheless, it would be better for that international organization to assume a more balanced and positive posture in order to be effective," it added.

Angola's population is among the poorest in Africa despite the country's raw material riches. In the past 30 years, the former Portuguese colony has known only moments of peace.

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