South Sudanese President, Salva Kiir and rebel commander, Riek Machar have signed a ceasefire deal on Monday, edging them closer to a final agreement to end a 15-month conflict that has ravaged the world’s newest country, mediators said.
African diplomatic sources said that the deal which is yet to be made public, sets out how the two leaders would share power once they
formed an interim government.
It is proposed Salva Kiir would remain President while Riek Machar would emerge as the Vice President.
The warring sides had also agreed to abide by a ceasefire deal that was earlier signed in January 2014 but violated.
The rebels, however, said many more details need to be ironed out before the deal can be labeled a “power-sharing” agreement.
Regional diplomats had warned the warring sides that if they could not come up with a new deal, sanctions would be imposed on them.
The chief mediator of the East African IGAD bloc, Seyoum Mesfin, said that the two leaders had agreed to resume talks on February 20.
“(Those talks) would be final and that would lead them into concluding a comprehensive agreement to end the crisis in South Sudan,” Mesfin told reporters minutes before Kiir and Machar signed the latest peace deal.
Several previous peace deals and ceasefires that accompanied the agreements had been broken.
The conflict in South Sudan erupted in December 2013 and has rumbled on since then despite several commitments by Kiir and Machar to stop the violence.
It was also reported that more than 10,000 people have been killed, about 1.5 million people have been rendered homeless and many in the oil-producing nation of about 11 million people could not get enough food to eat.
South Sudan is Africa’s newest nation and one of its poorest.
