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The rival parties in southern Sudan started two talks in Addis Ababa on Thursday to try to save a peace deal. There are only a few days left before the formation of a government union.
President Salva Kiir, rebel leader Riek Machar and a handful of other groups signed the peace agreement of September 2018, the latest in a series of efforts to end a devastating conflict for six years now.
But the parties failed to resolve several urgent issues before the establishment of a power-sharing government on May 12.
Representatives of the parties met in Addis Ababa for a meeting convened by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional bloc for East Africa, which was holding prayers before go in camera.
The government insisted that the meeting focus on how to advance the formation of the unity government.
The Machar camp, however, wants a six-month period to resolve the security and other problems that prevent it from returning.
"There are key issues that are not being implemented in accordance with the matrix of the revitalized peace agreement," Kang Pal Chol, a senior MPL-IO party official in Machar, told reporters on Tuesday. beginning of the meeting.
"We have proposed a timetable indicating that, for the implementation of these key issues, we need six months before we can complete our work."
"We hope that the meeting will come to a solution by the close of May 12. We hope that the leaders of Southern Sudan will come to their senses and agree on what will move the country forward."
South Sudan's information minister, Michael Makuei, told reporters that "if the government was not ready by the deadline of May 12, we would not have come here."
Machar lives in exile in Khartoum, after being chased out of Juba under a barrage of gunfire in 2016, when a previous deal collapsed.
He is supposed to come back as first vice president under the new contract.
Observers say that crucial steps envisaged in the agreement, such as the establishment of a unified army and the discussion on the security control of the capital, still have to take place.
The other key issue that remains to be addressed is the controversial issue of internal boundaries.
When he got his independence from Sudan in 2011, the country was divided into 10 states.
But it has since been subdivided into 32, in what many critics see as a reworking of Kiir's traditional boundaries to reinforce his power.
Chol insisted that his party wanted the problem solved before the formation of the new government.
Lack of political will
The South Sudan war broke out two years after independence, after Kiir accused his Machar, his former vice president, of planning a coup against him.
Battles between members of the Nuer community of Machar and the Dinka people of Kiir have been characterized by brutal violence on both sides, rapes and warnings of the UN on "ethnic cleansing" .
A peace agreement signed in August 2015 collapsed nearly a year after its signing and the conflict has spread, attracting more groups to the country.
The fighting killed around 380,000 people and forced more than four million South Sudanese – almost a third of the population – to flee their homes.
While the last peace agreement largely halted the fighting, violence continued in some areas with rebel groups that did not sign it.
According to a report released Tuesday by a group of UN experts, patience was exhausted.
"Commanders, fighters and civilians (…) have not yet seen the benefits of the deals made by their leaders," he said.
The report highlighted the government's resistance to the provisions of the agreement providing for warring parties to canton their troops, demilitarize civilian areas, collect certain types of heavy weapons and reveal the size and location of their strengths.
The latest peace agreement was also widely supported by long-time Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
His ouster made him fear that there is no one in the region who has the will or the influence to make sure that the South Sudanese apply the agreement.
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