President Kiir of South Sudan agrees to attend IGAD summit in Addis Ababa

By

Peter Louis

President Salva Kiir earlier this week, during a meeting with the Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Juba, agreed to attend a summit of the regional bloc IGAD on 18th January.

The East African regional body has already held six summits on the crisis in South Sudan since December 2013. This will be the seventh.

“I had a very fruitful discussion with his Excellency, President Salva Kiir Mayardit,” Tedros told journalists after the meeting.

“We had two issues to discuss: one is on the upcoming IGAD summit in Addis Ababa on January 18th, so he will be attending there, and we discussed the progress of the peace talks and preparations for the upcoming IGAD summit.”

He said he hoped the summit would build on the progress of the previous IGAD summit and “break the stalemate.”

“During the last summit there was agreement even on most of the issues, and there were very few sticky issues and a recess was agreed for the two parties to come back after consulting their constituencies. So we will start by listening to the report from their consultation, but as I said earlier, since there was agreement on most of the issues we will build on the issues that were agreed previously.”

For his part, South Sudan’s Foreign Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said that the Ethiopian prime minister had a “very warm and heart to heart discussion” with the South Sudanese president. During the meeting the president “agreed to attend the IGAD summit on the 18th”

The South Sudanese minister also emphasised that there are good relations between South Sudan and Ethiopia and he dismissed “rumours” of poor relations.

Likewise, Tedros announced plans for an upcoming bilateral meeting of a “joint ministerial commission” between Ethiopia and South Sudan in February.

“There are some agreements now being drafted… and we hope the next joint ministerial commission that will be held in Addis Ababa will take our bilateral relationship to even higher level,” stated the Ethiopian foreign minister.

Peter Louis

Peter Louis works as a freelance Videographer and Journalist in the Republic of South Sudan. He previously worked for Ebony TV, South Sudan Radio and South Sudan TV, Wau.