South Sudanese President Salva Kiir on Friday met with opposition leader and First Vice President Riek Machar, the minister of presidential affairs confirmed, reported Reuters.
The meeting came a week after Kiir breached a peace agreement by sacking top ministers from his cabinet.
In a statement, Machar’s office said that the meeting was held in a collegial spirit, but ended in a deadlock. The meeting, which was initially planned for Thursday, was rescheduled for Friday at the request of the president.
South Sudanese presidential affairs minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said in a statement that Kiir and Machar had frank deliberations in a friendly atmosphere that reflected the spirit of reconciliation, prosperity, and commitment to the peace agreement.
Marial said that the leaders agreed in a spirit of dialogue and cooperation to convene another meeting in the coming days to find amicable solutions to these issues.
South Sudan gained independence in 2011, but two years later was plunged into a civil war between forces loyal to Kiir and Machar that killed 400,000 people. The two leaders, later, entered into a peace agreement in 2018 that ended five years of civil war. Implementation of the Revitalised Peace Agreement for South Sudan has been slow so far and the opposing forces have clashed frequently over disagreements on power sharing.
Notably, Kiir’s decision to fire his government’s Defence and Interior ministers goes against the terms mentioned in the 2018 peace agreement.
In a presidential order read on state TV, the South Sudanese president sacked the country’s defence minister Angelina Teny, who is a member of the opposition SPLM-IO and is also Machar’s wife, and interior minister, Mahmoud Solomon, a member of the SPLM party.
Furthermore, Kiir also sacked the country’s Foreign Minister Mayiik Ayii Deng earlier this week without proving any explanation for the same.
