Uganda is not fueling the conflict in South Sudan, a senior official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has said, in respect to allegations made by a top UN official who oversees the war crimes docket.
MOFA spokesperson Ambassador Alfred Nam, who was reacting to remarks by Adama Dieng, the UN Secretary General’s Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, denied assertions to the effect that Uganda was a conduit for the proliferation of arms and ammunition used by South Sudan’s warring parties in a war that has seen thousands dead and over one million displaced.
“I have no comment to make since that assertion (Dieng’s) is not coming from Uganda,” Amb. Nam said, hastening to add: “Uganda in not in any way fueling conflict in South Sudan.”
Appearing VOA’s South Sudan in Focus programme on Monday, Amb. Dieng, also formerly the UN Chief Prosecutor at the Rwanda International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), said that both Uganda and Kenya were complicit in the South Sudan conflict, and called for targeted sanctions against the wheeler dealers.
“International partners have to start targeting the accomplices, intermediaries of the South Sudanese parties,” Amb. Dieng was quoted as saying.
Amb. Dieng was supported by the African Union chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat, who was quoted as saying on Sunday that ‘the time has come’ to impose sanctions on individuals blocking peace in South Sudan.
South Sudan, the world’s ‘youngest’ country gained Independence in 2011, but two years later, in 2013, descended into a civil war ignited by differences between President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his erstwhile Vice President Riek Machar.
In August 2015, Kiir and Machar, from the Dinka and Nuer tribes respectively, temporarily patched their differences after signing a ceasefire agreement in Addis Ababa, only for them to fall apart months later, culminating in the exiling of Machar in South Africa.
Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, (IGAD), is to meet between February 5-16 in Addis Ababa for talks on South Sudan.
