South Sudan President Salva Kiir (right) shakes hands with opposition leader Riek Machar during a meeting at State House Entebbe, Uganda on November 7, 2019. |
By Our Correspondent, ENTEBBE
Uganda
South Sudan’s President
Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar on Thursday agreed to delay key
benchmarks in the peace deal by 100 days.
Both
parties agreed to push back the deadline at tripartite talks hosted by
neighbouring Uganda, a guarantor to South Sudan's peace deal.
The delay in
forming a transitional government by November 12 came after the main opposition
group threatened to opt out of the deadline, saying security arrangements are
incomplete.
The parties
had failed to resolve several outstanding issues as the November 12 deadline
loomed for forming a transitional government with Machar as first vice
president.
Key critical
tasks in the peace deal have yet to be implemented, including drawing internal
boundaries and creating a national army.
In a
communique issued at the end of the meeting in Entebbe, both sides
agreed to delay the formation of a unity government, just days before it
was due to be established by President Kiir with or without his arch-rival Riek
Machar.
The two
principles agreed to review progress in the implementation of the peace
agreement after 50 days and that a report will be submitted to the IGAD heads
of state and parties.
“The parties
agreed to establish a mechanism from the guarantors and the parties to
supervise the implementation of the critical tasks,” the communique said.
President Museveni hosted Kiir, Sudan’s President of the
Transitional Sovereign Council Abdulfattah Abdulrahman as well as Dr Riek
Machar for a ‘tripartite summit’ on the agreement whose implementation was
threatening to implode the country.
Also present at the meeting was Kenya’s former vice
president Kalonzo Musyoka, now Nairobi’s special envoy to South Sudan.
“Today at State House Entebbe, I chaired the Tripartite
Summit on the Revitalised Agreement seeking to resolve the South Sudan
conflict. I thank Their Excellencies Salva Kiir and Riek Machar for coming and
holding candid discussions,” Museveni tweeted shortly after the daylong meeting
ended.
Sudan and Uganda are guarantors to the peace deal that
seeks to end nearly six years of civil war in South Sudan.
Today’s meeting also called on the Intergovernmental
Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional bloc for East Africa, to address
the status of opposition leader Riek Machar.
Puok Both
Baluang, the opposition SPLM-IO’s director of information, confirmed the
details to our correspondent. - Africa
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