Earlier in the day, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni walked out of the venue and returned to Kampala before the agreement document was finalized.
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In a statement Gatdet said: ““We the Generals of the SPLM/A in Opposition have lost confidence in the leadership of Dr. Riek Machar Teny, and from today he ceases to be the Chairman and Commander in Chief of the movement”.
President Salva Kiir arrives in Addis Ababa to attend peace talks aimed at ending civil war, ahead of a Monday deadline. But what exactly are these consequences?
This has been the subject of fevered debate in diplomatic circles in Addis Ababa as hopes for a successful outcome dwindle.
Born in 1951 in the remote cattle-herding state of Warrap to the majority Dinka people, Kiir spent much of his life carrying a gun, and still sports the thick beard of the bush rebel.
Sanctions – including arms embargoes, asset freezes and travel bans – could be imposed on both sides of the conflict if a breakthrough is not achieved.
The civil war has inflamed a decades-long divide between the Nuer ethnicity, which Machar belongs to, and Kiir’s Dinka ethnicity.
The Darfur sanctions show how such measures can be hard to enforce.
Last month, IGAD – the East African bloc mediating the talks – handed both sides what it called a compromise deal on power-sharing and other contentious issues, proposing a three-year interim period as a solution to the conflict while setting August 17 as the deadline to end the drawn-out talks. Government airstrikes on a rebel-held suburb of the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Sunday killed more than 80 people and wounded about 200, according to local activists and monitoring organizations. Because they are being taken to the court all over the world. “This vicious circle must be broken”, said Seyoum Mesfin, IGAD cheif negotiator. He’s right – but that doesn’t make him any more likely to succeed.
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Kiir’s presence in Addis Ababa comes less than two days after he canceled the planned trip over concerns that rebel factions slated to participate in Monday’s talks had split apart and would not present a united front.
