May 30th 2018 (Nyamilepedia) – South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir Mayardiit is in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to lobby for regional support over the South Sudan’s peace process, South Sudan officials in Ethiopia told the Nyamilepedia.
Kiir was accompanied by the acting foreign and cabinet minister Martin Elia Lomoro, minister of petroleum Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth and senior presidential advisor Nhial Deng Nhial.
“The president is here. He came here this morning to meet the Ethiopia’s prime minister over the High-Level Revitalization Forum,” one South Sudanese official at the South Sudan Embassy in Addis Ababa told the Nyamilepedia Wednesday on the condition of anonymity.
Kiir’s Ethiopia trip is the first of its kind since the current Ethiopian premier took office after a surprise resignation of Helamariam Desalenge as the leader of the ruling coalition and the Ethiopian prime minister in March.
On Tuesday, Dickson Gatluak Joak, a senior official in the defunct SPLM-IO faction of the first vice president Taban Deng Gai told the Nyamilepedia that the South Sudanese leader will travel to Ethiopia on Wednesday after the regional bloc extended an invitation to him for direct consultations on peace process.
South Sudan descended into civil war in December 2013 after forces loyal to the country’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardiit and his then Governor of Northern Bahr Al-Ghazal State Gen. Paul Malong Awan went door-to-door in the capital Juba killing civilians belonging to the Nuer ethnic group sparking a nation-wide protests from top army generals from the Nuer leading to a civil war.
A peace agreement signed in August 2015 by President Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar and negotiated under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union (AU) in presence of Troika and other international observers collapsed in July 2016 following fighting at the presidential palace in Juba “J1” reportedly after President Kiir ordered a failed attempt to arrest the SPLM-IO leader Riek Machar.
A peace revitalization process ended without a formal agreement between warring parties last week in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa after the regional mediated presented a peace proposal that seek to share power between different warring parties.
