{Uganda’s president said on Monday East African nations had agreed to unite to defeat South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar if he rejected a ceasefire offer, threatening to turn an outburst of ethnic fighting into a regional conflict.}
Two weeks of clashes have already killed at least 1,000 people in the world’s newest nation, rocked oil markets and raised fears of a civil war in a region ravaged by fighting in Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo.
“We gave Riek Machar four days to respond (to the ceasefire offer) and if he doesn’t we shall have to go for him, all of us. That is what we agreed in Nairobi,” Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni told reporters in South Sudan’s capital, Juba.
Asked what that meant, Museveni said: “to defeat him.”
There was no immediate confirmation of the pact from other countries, including economic powerhouses Kenya and Ethiopia, who have been trying to mediate and last week gave the sides until December 31 to lay down their weapons.
The United Nations, Washington, and other Western countries who have poured millions of dollars of aid into South Sudan since it won its independence from Sudan in 2011, have also scrambled to stem the unrest.
Fighting between rival groups of soldiers erupted in the capital Juba on December 15, then triggered clashes in half of South Sudan’s 10 states – often along ethnic lines, between Machar’s group, the Nuer, and President Salva Kiir’s Dinka.
Kiir, who sacked Machar in July, accused him of starting the fighting in a bid to seize power – a charge denied by Machar. He has since retreated into the bush and acknowledged he is leading rebel fighters.
Reuters
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