South Sudan foes set to meet after two years

ADDIS ABABA: The two figures at the centre of the civil war that has ravaged South Sudan are scheduled to meet for the first time in nearly two years.

Ethiopia, which has helped broker the meeting, says rebel leader Riek Machar, who fled South Sudan in July 2016, is expected to meet face- to- face with the country’s president, Salva Kiir.

Machar arrived in the Ethiopian capital for the talks, Menasseh Zindo, a senior official in his Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in Opposition (SPLMIO) rebel group, told AFP. A foreign ministry spokesman confirmed his arrival.

The official scope of the talks is broad – to build bridges between the two. But analysts say the outcome remains unclear given their notoriously volatile relationship, and there is doubt whether the meeting will even take place.

Once comrades-in arms in the fight for independence, Kiir and Machar experienced a bitter falling out, a development that played a key part in the civil war that blights the future of the world’s youngest state.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and nearly a third of the 12 million population have been driven out of their homes, and many to the brink of starvation.

The two will meet at the invitation of Ethiopia’s new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who also chairs the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) regional bloc that has taken the lead in thus-far fruitless peace negotiations.

Abiy “will call upon the two leaders to narrow their gap and work for the pacification of South Sudan and relieve the burden of death and uprooting of South Sudanese people,” Meles Alem, Ethiopian foreign ministry spokesman, said. — AFP