S. Sudan’s president, rebel leader promise to hold direct talks

JUBA, Friday

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday he had secured promises from South Sudan’s president and rebel leader to hold direct talks on ending the country’s brutal four-month-old civil war.

Kerry also urged Kenya and other East African countries on Thursday to prepare sanctions and supply peacekeeping troops as part of an intensifying effort to end the fighting in South Sudan.

Mr Kerry wants the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad), a seven-nation grouping that includes Kenya, to move quickly to implement plans discussed in March for deployment of an Igad “protection and stabilisation force” in South Sudan.

Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi had expressed willingness two months ago to contribute soldiers to such a force. Uganda has already dispatched some 2000 troops to South Sudan to assist government forces.

SLIDE TOWARDS GENOCIDE

After talks in Juba with President Salva Kiir, Kerry said the conflict — which has been marked by widespread atrocities and war crimes by both sides — could not be allowed to rage on amid warnings of a slide towards genocide and famine.

“I told President Kiir that the choices that he and the opposition face are stark and clear,” Kerry told reporters.

“The unspeakable human costs that we have seen over the course of the last months are unacceptable to the global community,” he added. “There could be major famine in the course of months ahead.”

Officials said Kerry has brandished the threat of targeted sanctions against Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar, and the top US diplomat said the two sides had for the first time agreed to sit down for face-to-face talks in neighbouring Ethiopia.

Kerry said President Kiir was “willing to travel to Addis Ababa in the near term, sometime early next week hopefully in order to engage in a discussion with the (Ethiopian) prime minister and hopefully with Riek Machar.”

UNANNOUNCED VISIT

“It is safe to say that President Kiir was very open... to take forceful steps in order to end the violence and implement the cessation of hostilities agreement and to begin to engage with respect to a transitional government,” Kerry said.

Kerry said that Machar had already agreed to such a meeting, but that he would be holding further telephone talks with him later Friday to set up the talks.

Kerry’s unannounced visit has been the most determined push yet for an end to the war, which has seen the world’s youngest nation collapse amid a brutal cycle of war crimes including widespread ethnic massacres, rape and child soldier recruitment.

Last month hundreds of people were massacred by rebels in the northern oil-hub of Bentiu — including in churches, mosques and hospitals — while a pro-government mob shot dead dozens of unarmed civilians sheltering in a UN base in the town of Bor.

APPALLING CONDITIONS

Thousands of people have already been killed — and possibly tens of thousands — with at least 1.2 million people forced to flee their homes. Tens of thousands are living in appalling conditions in overstretched UN bases.

Aid agencies are also warning that South Sudan is on the brink of Africa’s worst famine since the 1980s, with the United Nations demanding at least a one-month-long truce so that crops can be planted and food stocks boosted.

Prior to flying to South Sudan on Friday, Mr Kerry said in Addis Ababa that he and the foreign ministers of Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda had agreed on “the terms and timing and manner and size” of such an Igad force.

“It is our hope that in these next days, literally, we can move more rapidly to put people on the ground,” Mr Kerry said after his talks in Addis with Kenya's Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed and her counterparts from Uganda, Sam Kutesa, and from Ethiopia, Tedros Adhanom.

But details have not been finalised. These include the make-up of the East African force, its financing.