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Thursday, October 2, 2014
As South Sudan has seen nearly a year of unending violence the US has stepped in telling the government and rebels to engage in serious peace talks or face UN retribution. US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, warned Kiir and Machar that if a peace deal could not be reached during current talks then long-threatened sanctions were likely to be imposed by the UN Security Council
In December 2013 former VP Riek Machar and his followers led an unsuccessful coup attempt against president Silva Kiir, shortly after that fighting broke out between government troops and the rebels.
Talks between the two sides have taken place on and off in Addis Ababa but for the most part the talks have not been productive and have mostly stalled. Talks brokered by IGAD resumed near the end of September but no concrete progress has been made.
“(IGAD) are now sitting down with the parties and making very clear that if this round of talks … do not succeed then IGAD and the (Security) Council are going to need to move out on these long-threatened sanctions,” Power said.
Kiir raised concerns with the UN that its peacekeepers were now focusing on protecting civilians instead of state-building in South Sudan and were no longer helping with capacity building, security sector reforms, and development.
“I would urge President Kiir to engage in the talks with heightened seriousness and urgency if he wants to see the UN presence on the ground again move through this phase and back to the kind of functions that they performed previously,” Power told reporters.
“Unfortunately because the president of South Sudan and opposition leader Riek Machar have not yet shown the spirit of compromise that is needed, we can’t even begin to get to the conversation of when we start reverting to supporting government institutions,” Power said.
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