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S. Sudan official says peace talks do not fail

Xinhua, March 7, 2015 Adjust font size:

A South Sudan official on Saturday said the negotiations with the rebels in the Ethiopia capital Addis Ababa did not fail despite the fact that the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) mediators declared so.

"The negotiations have not failed. What happened is that we did not agree on some items as they were impossible to achieve," South Sudanese Information Minister Michael Makuei told Xinhua in Juba Saturday.

"Dialogue is a long process and a complicated goal such as peace cannot be reached in a short time," he noted.

Makuei held the rebels responsible of the stalemate of the talks, saying that "they have proposed items that cannot be accepted. We cannot accept existence of two armies during the transitional period. This is the essence of the difference."

He stressed his government's readiness for negotiations anytime, saying "we are committed to reaching a peace deal. We expect the IGAD to rearrange matters and invite the two parties for another round of talks."

The minister reiterated his government's commitment to the ceasefire agreement recently signed with the rebels. "There are clear orders to our forces to commit to the ceasefire agreement and not to initiate any military action except for in self-defence," he said.

Ethiopian Prime Minister and the IGAD Chief mediator Hailemariam Desalegn has earlier announced that the warring parties in South Sudan have failed to reach a deal to end the violence which erupted since mid-December 2013.

He said in a statement that the talks did not produce the necessary breakthrough, describing the two parties' failure as "unacceptable, both morally and politically."

South Sudan plunged into violence when fighting erupted between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and defectors led by his former deputy Riek Machar.

The conflict soon turned into an all-out war, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president's Dinka tribe against Machar's Nuer ethnic group.

The clashes have left thousands of South Sudanese dead and forced around 1.9 million people to flee homes. Endit