KHARTOUM: South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and arch-foe Riek Machar met on Monday for a new round of peace talks after a first meeting last week faltered.
Sudanese President Omar al Bashir is hosting in Khartoum the second round of talks between the two bitter rivals, aimed at ending South Sudan’s four-and-a-half year brutal civil war.
A first round brokered by Ethiopian premier Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa last Thursday failed to achieve any breakthrough.
On Monday, the two warring South Sudanese heavyweights met at a Khartoum convention centre in the presence of Bashir and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, an AFP correspondent reported.
Kiir and Machar shook hands and later stood alongside Bashir and Musevni with their hands raised.
Monday’s meeting comes as regional East African leaders launched new efforts to secure peace in South Sudan where warring factions face a looming deadline to avert UN sanctions.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people and driven about four million others from their homes.
It erupted after Kiir fell out with his then deputy Machar in December 2013, dashing the optimism that accompanied independence of South Sudan just two years earlier from Sudan.
Kiir and Machar’s meeting in Addis Ababa was their first face-to-face encounter in nearly two years and the first in Sudan since the fighting erupted.
“In this round of talks we are looking for a breakthrough to this thorny issue,” Sudanese Foreign Minister Al Dierdiry Ahmed told reporters on Sunday.
The Khartoum meeting comes after the one in Addis Ababa failed to reach a breakthrough when South Sudan’s government declared that it “had enough” of Machar soon after that encounter. — AFP
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