Angold Resources Ltd. announce that it has commenced its drill program on the Lajitas target at its Dorado Project in the Maricunga Belt of Northern Chile. Angold intends to drill 5,000 m of HQ core on Dorado. Drilling is planned for 10 drill holes, each with a depth of 500 m in the Lajitas area to identify mineralization beyond historically reported resources and to confirm historic intercepts. The drill holes are intended to achieve the following goals: 1. Step out to test strike and depth extensions of the mineralization on the project and infill between historic holes. Historic drill intercepts included 318 m @ 0.68 g/t Au and 261 m @ 0.91 g/t Au. Of the historic drill assays, 243 exceeded 1 g/t Au and ranged up to 6.92 g/t Au (Hole ID SF03). Table 1 lists selected historic drill highlights. 2. Validate historic drill data that formed the basis for a historic resource on the project, so that Angold may use the existing data in a new resource and subsequent drill programs. 3. Gather structure, lithology, alteration, trace element, and density data to build a geologic model for the deposit, which is currently preliminary. The intent of the geologic model is to better understand the structure, geochemistry, and alteration of the deposit to allow vectoring toward more tonnes and higher grade, and to inform exploration for other targets on the project. 4. Generate data for additional drilling at Lajitas, as well as exploration and drilling on additional targets on the project. REGIONAL EXPLORATION AT DORADO: A regional exploration program on the Dorado Project began on December 12th. The exploration plan is designed to test initial targets identified with geologic screening, ASTER hyperspectral processing, structural interpretation, image colour anomalies, and detailed knowledge of other deposits and mineralization styles in the region. The first-priority target on the project is Lajitas South, an area 1.5 x 2 km in extent underlain by magnetic, IP chargeability, and hyperspectral anomalies that remains untested. The Dorado exploration program is planned to include geologic mapping and sampling, magnetic surveys, talus fine sample grids, hyperspectral interpretation of all rock and talus fines samples, IDH analysis of talus fines samples (inverse-differential hydrogen, an indication of oxidizing sulfide minerals at depth), and selected IP-resistivity surveys over areas of promising results. Geologic mapping and sampling has begun, and 178 talus fines samples have been collected and delivered to ALS Minerals laboratory.