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U.S. envoy says mediators' patience in South Sudan ran out

Xinhua, July 31, 2015 Adjust font size:

U.S. special envoy to South Sudan Donald Booth said on Thursday that the patience of his country and the mediators has run out as South Sudan's warring parties have so far failed to reach an agreement to end the violence there.

"Too many lives have been lost, too many millions of South Sudanese have been displaced and too many are at the verge of starvation and facing homelessness," he noted.

Booth further reiterated that the talks between the South Sudanese rivals could not go on forever, urging the two parties to work to ink a comprehensive peace agreement to end the suffering of the South Sudanese people.

The Inter-Governmental Authority for Development in Africa (IGAD) earlier handed a draft of peace agreement to the two South Sudanese warring parties for consultation.

The two sides are expected to respond it during an African Union summit that is to be convened in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Aug. 5.

The IGAD's draft deal proposes that the South Sudan capital Juba is to be free from the armies of the two parties, provided that it is to be protected by forces affiliating to the United Nations and the African Union until the two parties' armies are merged within one year of the three-year transitional period.

The document also proposes that President Salva Kiir is to remain in position, while the office of the first vice president is to be assumed by the rebel leader, Riek Machar.

Despite many rounds of talks under the patronage of IGAD, the two South Sudanese rivals have failed to reach a peace deal to end the conflict.

South Sudan plunged into violence in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to President Kiir and defectors led by his former deputy 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 their homes. Endit