The South Sudanese opposition group SPLM-IO plans to send a high-level delegation to Uganda to discuss a new peace deal and to promote its implementation, according to a letter sent from leader Riek Machar to the brother of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
Machar has informed Museveni’s brother Gen. Salim Saleh Akandwanaho, Presidential Advisor on Defence and Security, that his deputy Alfred Ladu Gore will head the delegation.
The letter published by Insider Uganda says the delegation will also include SPLM-IO officials Richard Mulla, Ezekiel Lol, Stephen Par, Mabior Garang, Lumumba Stanislaus de Aping, Tijwok Agwet, Martin Abucha, Keat Gang Lual, Yata Joseph and David Kenyi.
Machar’s letter says the delegation will discuss the new peace agreement with Ugandan authorities and also “disseminate the said agreement amongst South Sudanese refugees in Uganda.”
UPDF required to withdraw
Under the terms of South Sudan’s new peace agreement, forces allied to either of the warring parties are required to leave the country. Uganda has troops stationed in the areas of Juba and Bor.
Article II.1.5 of the agreement reads, “The warring parties agree to a complete withdrawal of all state security actors allied to either Party in conflict within forty five (45) days upon signing of this Agreement from the territory of the Republic of South Sudan with the exception of Western Equatoria State…”
However, the Monitor newspaper in Uganda reported in its Saturday edition that the Ugandan Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Henry Oryem Okello, yesterday claimed that Uganda is not bound by the IGAD peace agreement.
Okello noted that Uganda is not a party to the deal. However, President Yoweri Museveni is one of the guarantors of the agreement.
“We are not pulling out. Uganda is not part of the agreement. We have a bilateral arrangement with South Sudan government like US has troops stationed in Japan,” Oryem said, as quoted by the Monitor.
It was unclear whether he was referring to the forces in Bor and Juba or only to the forces stationed in Western Equatoria, where the IGAD agreement makes an exception to allow them to remain. Ugandan forces in Western Equatoria are part of a coalition fighting the Lord’s Resistance Army, a group not involved in the current South Sudanese civil war but rather part of an older conflict that originated in Uganda.
Their presence in that state predates the civil war and is governed by an earlier deal.
File photo: Yoweri Museveni