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South Sudan foes set to meet after two years
ADDIS ABABA, June 20, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The two figures at the centre of
the civil war that has ravaged South Sudan are scheduled to meet on Wednesday
for the first time in nearly two years.
Ethiopia, which has helped broker the meeting, says rebel leader Riek
Machar, who fled South Sudan in July 2016, is expected to meet face-to-face
with the country’s president, Salva Kiir.
The official scope of the talks is broad — to build bridges between the
two.
But analysts say the outcome remains unclear given their notoriously
volatile relationship, and there is doubt whether the meeting will even take
place.
Once comrades-in arms in the fight for independence, Kiir and Machar
experienced a bitter falling out, a development that played a key part in the
civil war that blights the future of the world’s youngest state.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and nearly a third of its
population of 12 million have been driven out of their homes, many of them to
the brink of starvation.
The two will meet at the invitation of Ethiopia’s new prime minister, Abiy
Ahmed, who also chairs the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)
regional bloc that has taken the lead in thus-far fruitless peace
negotiations.
Abiy “will call upon the two leaders to narrow their gap and work for the
pacification of South Sudan and relieve the burden of death and uprooting of
South Sudanese people,” Meles Alem, Ethiopian foreign ministry spokesman,
said.
Kiir’s attendance has been confirmed by South Sudan’s ambassador to
Ethiopia, James Pitia Morgan, while Machar’s attendance has been confirmed by
Manasseh Zindo, a senior official in his Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-
in Opposition rebel group.
A landlocked state with a large ethnic mix, South Sudan gained its
independence from Sudan in 2011 after a long and brutal war.
MORE/MR/ 1200 hrs
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The event was hailed around the world and by celebrity supporters such as
George Clooney.
But in 2013, Kiir accused Machar, his vice president, of plotting a coup
against him, and violence erupted between the two factions, feeding on the
country’s brooding ethnic tensions.
– New fighting –
They have not met since July 2016, when heavy fighting in the capital Juba
signalled the collapse of a 2015 peace deal and Machar fled to South Africa.
The renewed violence spread across the country, spawning numerous new armed
opposition groups and further complicating peace efforts.
Despite the pressure, observers say Kiir has little incentive to make
concessions to his rivals.
His soldiers are winning militarily, while the opposition is more fractured
than ever before.
Efforts to revitalise the 2015 agreement resulted in a ceasefire in
December which lasted just hours before warring parties accused each other of
breaking it.
The meeting in Addis Ababa comes against a background of growing
international frustration.
In May, the UN Security Council gave the two warring sides a month to reach
a peace deal or face sanctions.
Washington was a critical backer of South Sudan during its separation from
Sudan, and remains Juba’s biggest aid donor.
But a top US official earlier this month threatened parties on both sides
of the conflict with sanctions after a report from a US foundation, The
Sentry, said South Sudanese elites were profiting from human rights abuses.
BSS/AFP/MR/ 1200 hrs