South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir has welcomed the regional bloc’s proposal for face-to-face talks with rebel leader Dr. Riek Machar. Kiir met Ethiopia’s prime minister who heads the IGAD council last week and the two leaders agreed that the regional bloc’s proposal for peace is viable.
The Kiir announced the move saying that he has welcomed the face-to-face talks with Machar as the only way to forge lasting peace in the restive country. Kiir has said that the only way for the young nation to move forward is to have talks with Machar.
President Kiir and rebel leader Dr. Machar last meet in July 2016 when the violence erupted at the presidential palace. Dr. Machar fled the country and is currently in South Africa under house arrest. His group has previously insisted that Machar must be part of negotiations for peace and stability of South Sudan.
In March this year, IGAD said it would end Machar’s house arrest if he would agree to renounce violence, not obstruct the peace process and relocate to any country ‘outside the region not neighboring South Sudan’, but is not yet done. The United Nations security council last week renewed sanctions on South Sudan to last until mid-July, while at the same time imposing a June 30 deadline for a peace deal to be reached.
South Sudan plunged into war in December 2013, barely two years after independence from Sudan, after a disagreement between President Kiir and his former deputy Machar deteriorated into a military confrontation.
