{Addis Ababa — South Sudan’s former vice-president, Riek Machar, who leads the opposition faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM-IO), is in Tanzania to attend the ongoing intraparty dialogue with president Salva Kiir’s faction.}
Delegates from the two warring parties have been engaging in a series of negotiations in Arusha to try to bridge the rift created by divisions among party leaders which resulted in the violence that erupted on 15 December 2013.
Machar, who returned to Addis Ababa on Friday from Pretoria in South Africa, arrived in Arusha on Sunday.
“Yes, he arrived in Arusha on Sunday to grace the intra-SPLM dialogue,” the opposition leader’s spokesman, James Gatdet Dak, confirmed his travel to Sudan Tribune on Sunday.
Dak said the rebel leader’s trip came in response to invitation by the Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete, also the chairman of the Tanzanian ruling party, The Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM).
CCM has been sponsoring and moderating the intraparty talks since mid-last year in which the parties previously agreed on the agenda and guiding principles.
Sources close to the talks suggested there was prospect of a breakthrough in the latest round of negotiations.
The SPLM-IO faction had suggested the need to address the root causes including deficiencies in the party’s top leadership, hinting replacement as a positive step.
Soudan Tribune
Leave a Reply