October 9th 2019 (Nyamilepedia) – The United States has threatened that it will slap sanctions on South Sudan if the government of President Salva Kiir don’t fully implement the revitalized peace agreement.
This came after President Kiir said last month he may unilaterally form the unity government provided for in the agreement if opposition groups such as the SPLM-IO led by Dr. Riek Machar don’t cooperate on forming the government in November.
Machar, a key figure in the agreement, argues that a solution on the number of states must first be settled before a unity government is formed to avoid return to war over the matter which also led to collapse of the agreement in 2016.
“What we all have when we see November 12, we don’t say ‘with or without.’ November 12 in our minds is implementing the peace agreement which is a unity government, including all the parties. So if you have one other party which is not moving on then you don’t have a unity government by definition of the peace agreement,” Thomas Hushek, US ambassador to South Sudan said Monday.
“So far some of those have been very slow to come,” he said, noting that “the government hasn’t put forward its pledged financial support for the process yet.
“We don’t want ill-gotten gains to be finding its way into our financial systems. If a country finds out that money that was stolen from the people here by corrupt officials, if it’s being invested in the US., sometimes sanctions can help a country get those ill-gotten gains back.”
