S. Sudan Rebels Stress Commitment To Peace Talks

A delegation representing South Sudanese rebels, currently in Addis Ababa for peace talks, remains committed to continuing negotiations, although members of Juba's delegation have been a no-show for the last three days, the head of the rebel delegation said Tuesday.



"It was unfortunate that the government delegation was boycotting the meetings; I hope they will come on board," Gen. Taban Deng told Anadolu Agency.



The delegation representing the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in Opposition will continue participating in peace talks brokered by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Deng said, "until the mediators tell us to go home."



Deng's reaffirmation came as multi-stakeholder talks remain ongoing in the government delegation's absence with a focus on proposals put forth by IGAD mediators.



"We presented our proposal on the permanent ceasefire, disengagement of forces, formation of a new joint presidential guard and formation of a new police structure," Deng said.



"We are actually proposing that there should be an overhaul in the area of security arrangement in the army, police, in war line, in civil defense and national security," he added.



"Now of course the country is divided; there are two armies, two police and two security organs," he went on. "So we need to calm them in position; we need to disengage them; we need to reorganize them; to train them and unite them again."



"We are proposing that the SPLM/A name should be changed into the 'South Sudan Armed Forces'," he said. "When we do that, we train them, we discipline them, and they can be united, be integrated and then now deployed."



In the area of governance, he said his delegation had proposed that the country embark on a thorough restructuring process.



"We are proposing a federal system of governance. We have now ten states, but the current constitution is not clear on the federal arrangement, on decentralization," he said.



"People are calling for a federal system of governance, so we are proposing 21 states with full federal arrangement, which will start from the transitional period and go into the time of permanent constitution," he said.



"On the area of wealth sharing, we are proposing new restructuring on how to share oil," he said, noting that the delegation's proposal called for 30 percent to go to the oil-producing state, 30 percent to the federal government, 15 percent to all states, 15 percent to all counties and 5 percent to a future generation fund.



He did not say where the remaining 5 percent would go.



South Sudan has been shaken by violence since last December, when President Salva Kiir accused his sacked vice-president, Riek Machar, of plotting to overthrow his regime.



Hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese have since been displaced in fighting between the two rivals, leading to an increasingly dire humanitarian situation for large swathes of the nascent country's population.



In recent months, the two camps have held on-again, off-again peace talks in Addis Ababa under the auspices of IGAD, an East Africa trade bloc headquartered in Djibouti.



Representatives of both sides are currently in the Ethiopian capital to discuss implementation of a June agreement to draw up a transitional government.



By Addis Getachew                                         



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