Former South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar is scheduled to meet President Salva Kiir on Monday, as they seek ways to implement a stalled peace deal, reported Reuters.
The South Sudanese government spokesman Michael Makuei told AFP that Machar is expected to sit down with President Salva Kiir to discuss all the issues of the peace agreement and what to do in the future.
“The meeting aims at discussing the outstanding issues related to the implementation of the R-ARCSS (peace deal) with President Kiir and other head of the parties to the agreement,” Machar’s director for information, Puok Both Baluang, said. “It will be a two-day visit.”
After splitting away from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan soon descended into war in 2013 when Kiir accused his former deputy and fellow former rebel leader Machar of plotting a coup. The clashes killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced a third of the population and crashed the economy. The two leaders finally signed an agreement in September 2018, under pressure from international and regional powers, to end the civil war.
The last time that Kiir and Machar were seen together was in the Vatican in April, when Pope Francis stunned the world by kissing the feet of two men accused of responsibility for heinous war crimes.
The power-sharing arrangements under the peace deal were supposed to take effect in May. But the process was delayed by six months until November as both sides disagreed over the terms.
The pact, which called out for the formation of a unity government, has been delayed as the government says it does not have adequate funds to pay for the disarmament and the integration of all the armed factions. The cost of these measures could reach $285 million, but the government has provisioned only $10 million so far.
