UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said that South Sudan’s rebel chief has agreed to direct peace talks, hours after the UN leader arrived in South Sudan to demand an end to a brutal civil war.
Leaders on both sides have previously defied peace agreements despite bloodshed and famine.
Rebel chief Riek Machar has now agreed to the idea of peacetalks, AFP news agency has reported.
Tuesday’s visit, which comes as rebels and government forces battle for control of a key oil town, is the latest major push for a ceasefire in the nearly five-month-old conflict that has seen the world’s youngest nation collapse amid a brutal cycle of war crimes.
“The Secretary-General has repeatedly called on the leaders to find a political solution, and to put an immediate end to the violence which has led to the suffering of so many innocent civilians,” a report by the AFP news agency quoted a UN statement as saying.
Both sides in the conflict have been accused of widespread ethnic massacres, rape and the recruitment of thousands of child soldiers….
South Africa Today – South Africa News – South Sudan
