S. Sudan president says spoiler stalling peace implementation
January 11, 2017 (JUBA) – South Sudan President Salva Kiir has expressed disappointment with lack of progress in the implementation of the peace agreement which he signed with his first former deputy in government and other stakeholders to end more than three years conflict, claiming spoilers were preventing the deal to be implemented.
Kiir made the remarks on Tuesday in Cairo, Egypt, where he led a high level government delegation in respond to invitation extended to him and members of his regime by his host.
“I want to inform you that there are people, the spoilers who are preventing the implementation of the peace agreement, as we speak here, they are holding a conference in Nairobi that the agreement has collapsed and they want the agreement to be renegotiated, they know what they are doing to South Sudanese so that they are diverted from the government not to listen to what government is doing,” said Kiir in a speech broadcast by the state owned South Sudan Television.
The agreement, according to the president, did not collapse, citing his work relations with his controversially appointed first vice president in place of Machar with whom he signed the deal.
“I want to assure you that the agreement has not collapsed. The First Vice President Taban Deng Gai is working with me very closely, and we are implementing the agreement. They think that without Riek Machar, there is no agreement, but that’s not the way people work. You can sign an agreement and you get out of it, like what happened to us in South Sudan,” he said.
He attempted to justify his desire to work with his preferred choice with the death of the founding leader of the governing Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), John Garang, who died before completing the implementation of the 2005 peace accord which he signed to end more than two decades with Sudan, from which the young nation seceded in 2011 in accordance with self-determination protocol.
“Dr. John, who was our leader during the war, signed the agreement, unfortunately, God took him after days, but the agreement didn’t collapse. President Bashir who signed the agreement and myself, who was a deputy to John Garang, we implemented the agreement this is why now South Sudan became an independent, nobody wanted to destroy what has been done,” he said.
(ST)