‘S. Sudan’s leaders should form unity gov’t now, and then deal with pending issues later – Asst. Sec. Nagy

January 28, 2020 Newsbeat

The United States’ Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Tibor Nagy,

January 28th, 2020 (SSNN)—South Sudan’s government and opposition groups should move on with the formation of a Transitional Government of National Unity and then deal with other outstanding issues later after ensuring that everything is on the right track, said the US Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of African Affairs, Tibor P. Nagy during a special phone briefing today.

The US official was responding to a question inquiring whether the government of South Sudan and the opposition would be able to form a unity government on time by February 22 – as agreed in Kampala, Uganda last year.

QUESTION : Hi, Assistant Secretary. I was hoping to ask about South Sudan and your conversations with the President Kiir. The U.S. has obviously been one of the strongest workers pushing both the warring parties there to meet the February 22 deadline to form a unity government [inaudibe] leverage sanctions to get [inaudibe] by him. I was wondering if you could provide feedback on your assessment of the progress on those sticking point issues, such as the number of states and boundaries, and also the formation of unified forces. Do you think they will meet that deadline?

ASST. SEC. NAGY: “Yeah, thanks very much. I really appreciate that question. Here’s the situation, and in this respect we can also bring in the whole – events and processes in Sudan. There are a number of sticky issues still outstanding between the two principals in South Sudan; we know about those. You mentioned one of them, which is the number of states. And here’s the deal: if they try to, as we say, cross every “t” and dot every “i,” who knows when they can get around to announcing a unity government?

Here in Sudan, they had even more complicated issues to deal with during last year, when they formed the transitional government, and instead of trying to find solutions to all of these very difficult problems, they decided and agreed to just put those to the side, form the transitional government, and then deal with the issues during the transition period.”

The U.S. official said that while discussing with South Sudan’s leaders, he advised them to proceed with the formation of the unity government and then address those outstanding components of the R-ARCSS later.

Nagy stressed that after the formation of the unity government, determining the number of states and their boundaries will not be a political decision, but rather a technical decision that will be taken by an independent team of experts.

“I made the same pitch to both of the protagonists in the South Sudan scenario, because there is no reason why they cannot go ahead, form the unity government, and then agree to deal with those issues. I mean, take the number of states. It’s really not going to be a technical decision, because you can get a committee of experts to come up with very, very precise lines on, you know, exactly where the state should be, but at the end of the day it’s going to be a political decision.

He underscored that, in the same vein, the United States congressional districts were determined because of mutual concessions and compromises.

“You know, just like congressional districts in the United States. They’re political decisions. That’s what they’re going to have to agree on. It’s going to be a lot of give and take, you know, 10, 23, 24, 32, whatever; they have to agree to it. So why not go ahead, form the unity government, and then deal with these very, very difficult issues, because each party has their own constituents, to resolve. Otherwise, we’ll be having the same conversation in a year or – who knows – five years.”