South Sudan’s main opposition leader Riek Machar will arrive in the country’s capital Juba on Saturday, his opposition group said on Friday.
This is the second time he would travel to Juba in more than a month before becoming the country’s first vice president in a unity government expected to be formed by 12 November.
Machar's visit to Juba comes before a delegation of members of the United Nations Security Council arrives in Juba on Sunday.
“Dr. Machar will go to Juba on Saturday. We have received an invitation letter from the United Nations for Dr. Machar to attend a meeting in Juba,” Pouk Both Baluang, the SPLM-IO's director for information told Radio Tamazuj.
The opposition official said Mr. Machar, who resides in neighboring Sudan, will spend two days in Juba. “Machar will return to Khartoum as soon as their meetings conclude in Juba,” he said.
The UN Mission in South Sudan announced Tuesday a high-level delegation of the United Nations Security Council will arrive in the capital, Juba, on Sunday in order to put its weight behind the political process.
The scheduled meeting between the delegation of the United Nations Security Council and all parties to the September 2018 peace deal comes as a 12 November deadline approaches to form a unity government.
However, steps toward key benchmarks in the peace deal – unifying armed forces and drawing boundaries of states – are lagging far behind schedule.
A similar peace deal, that returned Machar to the post of first vice president, was signed in 2015 but fell apart a year later in deadly clashes in Juba that saw opposition leader Riek Machar flee into exile.