South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and opposition leader Riek Machar are presently in a closed-door meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The closed-door meeting is part of efforts to resolve the contentious issue of the number of states and security arrangements.

The two men are in a closed-door meeting that kicked off two hours ago. Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, and IGAD’s Executive Secretary Workneh Gebeyehu are present at the meeting.

“President Kiir and Dr Machar are still deliberating on the number of states and security arrangements. We don’t know what is going on because it is a closed-door meeting,” Pouk Both Baluang, the SPLM-IO ’s director for information, told Radio Tamazuj from Addis Ababa this afternoon.

With a February 22 deadline approaching for South Sudan’s rival parties to form a transitional government, there is still no deal on how many states the country should have or their internal boundaries.

According to Pouk, the closed-door meeting aims at discussing the way forward over the key pending issues of the peace agreement. “We are still waiting for the outcome of the meeting,” he said.

He said the opposition welcomes the recommendation made by the IGAD Council of Ministers and special envoys calling for the establishment of 23 states plus Abyei Area in South Sudan.

“We welcome the recommendation of the IGAD Council of Ministers and the government has to demonstrate political will for the sake of peace in our country,” Pouk said.

A mediation team led by South Africa’s Deputy President David Mabuza has been facilitating talks aimed at ending the dispute since December last year, but there was no breakthrough.

Under the terms of the peace deal, South Sudan’s rival leaders are to create a unified army and agree on the number of states and their boundaries.