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South Sudan rejects UN trusteeship proposal: official

Xinhua, August 4, 2016 Adjust font size:

South Sudan will reject any proposal to put it under United Nations and African Union (AU) trusteeship after it gained currency in the wake of the intense July fighting, its official said on Thursday.

"The South Sudan advocacy group, led by former Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) Secretary General Pagan Amum is lobbying for South Sudan to be put under UN trusteeship. The people of South Sudan will not accept and transitional unity government condemns it," deputy government spokesman Paul Akol Kordit told Xinhua in an interview in Juba.

The self exiled Amum, now drumming up support for the UN administration in the country is the leader of the former detainees who were tried and released on charges of treason in the aftermath of the outbreak of fighting in December 2013, and most of them have since taken up positions in the transitional unity government.

Amum, now a radical critic of President Salva Kiir, lives in the U.S. after he declined the offer to serve under the latter in the wake of the fighting in 2013.

"This is regrettable he is among those who participated in the war that led to separation of this country from Sudan in 2011. I want to appeal to him that this is time for South Sudan to move forward," Akol decried.

Initially, the AU/UN proposed administration of the oil impoverished war-torn country was invoked by Princeton Lyman, a senior presidential adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama and also former Sudan and South Sudan Ambassador.

"There is, however, another way: put South Sudan on "life support" by establishing an executive mandate for the UN and the AU to administer the country until institutions exist to manage politics nonviolently and break up the patronage networks underlying the conflict. This will realistically take 10-15 years," Lyman wrote in an opinion in July.

He added given South Sudan's extreme degree of state failure, temporary external administration is the only remaining path to protect and restore its sovereignty.

"Though seemingly radical, international administration is not unprecedented and has previously been employed to guide Kosovo, East Timor and other countries out of conflict. In South Sudan, the stakes are no less," he said.

South Sudan has since rejected the AU proposal to send in foreign troops from regional countries under the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development(IGAD) to help serve as buffer force between Machar's rebel force, Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA-IO) and soldiers loyal to President Kiir in the wake of the deadly clashes on July 8-11 that killed 300 people and forced about 60,000 people to flee to neighboring countries.

Machar's whereabouts remain unknown as he has vowed to only return to Juba after a third force is deployed to separate the two armies, putting doubts on the peace agreement holding as intermittent fighting continues between the two forces. Endit