South Sudan downplays global pressure to reach peace with rebels
July 31, 2015 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir has downplayed possibility of a peace agreement soon with the armed opposition faction led by his former deputy, Riek Machar, criticizing the compromise proposal from IGAD-Plus as a designed document to perpetuate the war in the oil rich Upper Nile region.
President Kiir’s deputy minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation, Peter Bashir Gbandi, who has been assigned a committee tasked to study the new peace proposal by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), said on Friday that the regional body had not changed any text from the previous proposal which both government and the leadership of the armed opposition had already rejected in the past.
“The committee looked at the documents of the new proposal and it found out that much as they tried to work around the documents, they did not do much to call it a compromised proposal. They just worked around the documents and called [it] compromised. Nothing has changed from the texts,” Gbandi told Sudan Tribune on Friday.
Gbandi, who is one of the leading members for the government negotiating team, said the proposal sought to perpetuate the war and undermines unity of the country and efforts to arrest the conflict.
“If you look at the texts and examine them carefully, words by words and page by page, you will realize that nothing has changed. It has been drafted in a way that will perpetuate the war and undermine peace and unity of our people. It will not work. Our people will not accept to divide the country,” he said.
“Yes they want peace but it must be a peace which promotes harmony and love, not more division.”
The official further narrated that the government had asked the international community to work together with the regime in Juba to convince the armed opposition faction led by Machar to show leadership and exhibit commitment to resolving the conflict through peaceful dialogue.
ARMY REJECTS IGAD PROPOSAL
Also, the South Sudanese army (SPLA) chief of general staff, Paul Malong Awan, warned on Wednesday at a function observing the red army day that he would not accept a security arrangement that replaces ethnic Nuer colleagues in the army whom the government had been using to fight in Upper Nile region against the armed opposition fighters.
“We are not going to discard and victimize the sons of Upper Nile who have remained defending the constitution,” said Awan.
“We are not going to accept to replace Stephen Buay, who has resisted in division one, and then Nhial, Batong, PulJang, and two sector commanders: Gong Biliu and Chathath Lam. We will not replace them with those who have rebelled,” he said, as he was naming senior ethnic Nuer army commanders who had been fighting on behalf of president Kiir’s government in Unity and Upper Nile states.
The comments from the senior government officials, including the president appeared to be a direct response to the remarks of the US president Barrack Obama during his recent visit to the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he argued the two principal leaders to end the conflict with the signing of a peace agreement next month. Obama warned of consequences should the two leaders refuse to sign a peace agreement by 17 August.
President Kiir was not invited to the IGAD leaders’ meeting with the US president Obama.
The US special envoy for South Sudan and Sudan, Donald Booth, also told journalists on Thursday that his country and the region had run out of patience and that the proposal was a good chance for South Sudanese leaders to make peace.
“We fully support this compromise proposal that has been put on the table. As I said if it can be improved upon by the South Sudanese parties, we will also support that,” Ambassador Donald Booth told a press conference in Juba.
“But otherwise, we expect that there will be an agreement by the 17th of August,” he added.
He said his country and the international community was running out of patience, stressing the urgent need for a peaceful resolution of the 20-month old conflict in the young nation.
(ST)