February 9th 2020 (Nyamilepedia) – South Sudan government has blamed main armed opposition leader Dr. Riek Machar Teny for the failure of talks in Addis Ababa this afternoon after the opposition insisted on reduction of states.
The regional bloc, IGAD, which is mediating a breakthrough on the outstanding issues including the number of states yesterday decided to endorse 23 states plus Abyei area which were proposed by opposition groups in January.
The government rejected the proposal and accused the regional body of favoring the country’s opposition.
Speaking to SSBC this evening following the talks, information minister Michael Makuei said the IGAD has suspended the talk after the government requested a break for consultation at home.
He accused Machar of changing stances saying Machar has now given a new condition of returning the country to ten states which used to be there prior to the creation of the 32 states by President Kiir in October 2016 after being at the helm of 23 yesterday.
“In our resumption today, Dr. Riek Machar, instead of standing on his 23 states, he went down again to ten. So, the discussion of today concentrated around the ten states,” Makuei said.
“When Dr. Riek decided to come back again to ten states, he made it even worse than before and we told him in clear words that we are not ready to continue. The government has been clear that we are not ready to change even a single state. We are not ready to remove even a single state out of 32 states plus Abyei,” the senior government official added.
