{After the international community has been piling pressure on Kiir to release the suspected coup plotters as a confidence-building measure in the ongoing peace talks and to enable both parties find a political, homegrown and peaceful solution to the crisis in South Sudan, President Gen. Salva Kiir said he can only budge to the request for the detainees’ release “only after legal procedures” have been exhausted.}
According to statement seen by Chimpreports on Wednesday, the first face-to-face talks between the Government and the rebel’s representatives started Monday after days of separately deliberating on the ground rules of the talks aimed at ending the three weeks of violence.
“We said in the beginning we are committed to dialogue, but without preconditions, nobody should give us conditions. We still remain committed to that principle. We are now been given conditions that we release political detainees first before talks could go ahead,” warned Kiir in a joint press conference with visiting Sudan President, Omar Bashir.
“This is a condition that I will not accept, if it a matter of releasing the detainees, we have to follow legal measures, the legal procedures will have to be followed according to the constitution,” President Kiir reaffirmed.
President Kiir while stressing accountability said “We have lost more than 100 lives and if such a number of people have died, property has either been destroyed or looted; we want to know who is responsible for all these losses. It is not just a matter of releasing people who have been the cause of all this destruction, they will be released but not as a precondition for talks”.
At least 1, 000 people have been killed and 200,000 people displaced following a “foiled coup” attempt in mid December last year.
Following the coup attempt, the Government arrested more than ten individuals and accused the former Vice President Dr. Reik Machar who has declared war against the Government of plotting the “failed coup”.
Rebel forces are still engaging the Government forces, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the two states of Jonglei and Unity despite calls for a ceasefire.
The East African regional Bloc- Inter-Government Authority on Development [IGAD] is taking the lead in the mediations.
On Monday, President Bashir called for an immediate end to the fighting and urged the two parties to take the IGAD peace initiative to end the crisis.
“Violence cannot solve anything, we fought among ourselves for 21 years and lastly we had to go to the negotiation table to resolve our difference,” President Bashir said while referring to Sudan’s long civil war that ended in the Independence of South Sudan in July 2011. President Bashir reiterated his support to a peaceful solution in ending the currently crisis in South Sudan.
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