S. Sudan fighting groups sign unity pact
Mediator. President Museveni (right) meets the warring SPLM officials at State House in Entebbe on Thursday. PPU PHOTO
What you need to know:
President Museveni first met the four SPLM factions late in May and again last week on Thursday met officials from SPLM-IG and SPLM-FD led by Ms Rebecca Garanga, the widow of one of the founding fathers of the country, John Garang. Ms Garanga was sacked by president Kiir in 2014 from her position as adviser on gender issues and human rights.
Kampala. President Museveni has rallied warring factions in South Sudan to first ensure unity within the ruling party as part of the implementation efforts of the peace pact first signed in Arusha, Tanzania in 2015. The declaration signed by the parties will “feed into” the wider peace process brokered by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad).
The President, according to a State House statement, met the three Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) fighting groups on Thursday evening after which they signed the document code-named ‘Entebbe Declaration’ that is expected to operationalise the Arusha Agreement on the reunification of SPLM.
The warring factions are president Salva Kiir’s SPLM and his former deputy, Dr Riek Machar’s SPLM-IO (in opposition). However, there is another ambivalent group, the SPLM-FD.
Thursday’s meeting was also attended by officials of other South Sudan opposition political parties, according to the statement. The meeting agreed that the warring factions will “develop matrix for implementation of the Arusha Agreement with specific timelines and shall report” back after one week.
President Museveni earlier on told world leaders gathered in Kampala on June 23 for the Refugee Solidarity Summit, that he had been offered an extra-role by president Kiir in the ongoing interventions to return peace to the world’s country.
Igad, a seven-member regional bloc comprising of countries in the Nile Valley and Great Lakes, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia, Djibouti, Sudan, South Sudan, and Kenya, is leading the main process to broker a solution.
In 2015, both president Kiir and Dr Machar put signature to the Arusha accord overseen by former Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete, as a commitment to end all hostilities, given that previous agreements had all been dishonoured as soon as they were signed. The accord was witnessed by President Museveni himself and other regional leaders.
The Arusha Accord, which now metamorphosed into the Entebbe Accord, is in tandem with the Igad-led process facilitated in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
Background
Earlier attempts. President Museveni first met the four SPLM factions late in May and again last week on Thursday met officials from SPLM-IG and SPLM-FD led by Ms Rebecca Garanga, the widow of one of the founding fathers of the country, John Garang. Ms Garanga was sacked by president Kiir in 2014 from her position as adviser on gender issues and human rights.
