South Sudan’s rival parties have on Friday agreed to postpone the establishment of the power-sharing ruling government, days before the country was due to installing a government in the capital, Juba.
According to Al-Jazeera news reports, the warring parties met in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, to agree over a way forward on creating a national unity government as part of a peace agreement which both sides have inked in last year September.
The parties failed to resolve various issues at the deadline, May 12, loomed for forming a unity ruling government with Machar as the nation’s vice president.
Machar’s camp was seeking a six-month extension in order to resolve security along with other issues which, it says, was to prevent him from returning to Juba back from exile, to which he fled in 2016 during the time when a peace deal collapsed.
The government was seeking a meeting to be focused over the establishment of a joint ruling administration in Juba. However, both the parties agreed to extend the deadline, while attending a meeting hosted by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), East Africa’s regional bloc.
In a statement, IGAD said, “The Parties identified lack of political will, financing and time constraints as the major challenges that have delayed implementation of the Pre-Transitional tasks.”
IGAD’s South Sudan special representative Ismael Wais has said both warring parties tried to avoid a crisis by agreeing over the extension to curb out unresolved aspects of a peace deal. He said, “Now, this meeting proved all the South Sudan parties are committed to the peace agreement.”
The development needed approval by regional foreign ministers’ council from Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia, next week.