By Simon Deng
The attack by members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition on their own group is attack on the Transitional Government of National Unity in South Sudan, an analyst in the capital Juba said.
The group under Gen. Simon Gatwech Dual has been engaging in offensives on SPLM-IO members who have remained loyal to First Vice President Riek Machar over several months now.
“What the government is supposed to do, the government is supposed to give them pressure to denounce that they were fighting SPLA-IO, they should agree that they were fighting the unified government,” Abraham Kuol Nyuon, a political science professor at the University of Juba told Juba Echo by phone yesterday.
“There is no way you fight SPLM-IO (alone) which is part of the unity government.)
On Tuesday, Dual and compatriot, Gen. Johnson Olony met a government delegation led by Tut Gatluak Manime, the Presidential Advisor on national security affairs in order to find a peaceful solution to the fighting.
Michael Makuei Lueth, the Minister for Information said there has been no more update from the talks by press time.
Puok Both Baluang, the press secretary for Machar said that the SPLM-IO is not part of the talks in Khartoum, noting that the initiative has though been welcomed by Machar.
“If the president has an attempt to talk to them we believe it is part of resolving the problem to stop the fighting,” Baluang said.
“If the talk doesn’t bear any fruit we believe that the transitional of national unity should deal with them has a negative force and attempt to derail stability of South Sudan.”
According to Prof. Nyuon, “that negotiation will end in vain, it will not go anywhere.”
“You cannot bring people on the table who don’t have problems with one another and expect them to negotiate something tangible,” he said.
