South Sudan says Western powers resumed regime change agenda

Sudantribune July 24th 2017

South Sudanese government said on Monday that recent statements condemning the actions of the military were a return of western powers to the regime change agenda campaign.



Presidential Adviser on Military Affairs Daniel Awet Akot said there was nothing the government and the president, in particular, has not done to stop the war and end the humanitarian crisis in the country.

“What has the government not done, you tell me? The cabinet as stipulated in the agreement has been formed and the Transitional Legislative Assembly has been reconstituted.The army has been restructured and the members of the SPLM-IO are in the army now and in the government at senior levels. And many more things are still being done. The peace agreement is being implemented”, Akot told Sudan Tribune on Monday.

The presidential adviser said what was happening in the country was an attempt of some western powers that had failed to fund the implementation of the agreement because they want to use it as a strategy to resume regime change agenda.

“In the agreement, the roles of the stakeholders and guarantors were defined and divided. There were things which the government would do and things which the region and the international community would do. As the government, we have done what we were required to do in the agreement but what did they do, you ask them. You are the media and you people in the media instead of asking them (international community) come to us and ask questions you should have asked them to answer. How can we answer questions which are not ours?»

The senior member of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) under President Salva Kiir, claimed unnamed western powers were continuing to advocate for regime change

“What I am seeing is a clear resumption of the regime change agenda rhetoric by some western powers, which we know. This is why they have refused to fund the implementation of the peace agreement which was what they made themselves but the government accepted because it wanted peace,” he added.

The Troika countries (Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and the European Union on 20 July condemned the attacks carried by the government army on the positions of the SPLM-IO forces near the Ethiopian border in Pagak, as well as ongoing road ambushes and attacks by the SPLM-IO.

«The Pagak offensive is a clear violation of the unilateral ceasefire declared by President Salva Kiir on May 22, and calls into question the government’s commitment to reach peace through the National Dialogue, notwithstanding the sincere efforts undertaken by the leaders of the Steering Committee,» said the joint statement.

United Kingdom’s Permanent Representative to the United Nation Matthew Rycroft recently said that President Salva Kiir’s government has deliberately ignored calls to implement the peace deal and has not honoured its own ceasefire declared in May.

“What the government of South Sudan says has no relation with what it does, “said Rycroft.

“In June, we saw humanitarian access being blocked, a hundred times, the highest month in 2017 so far. In addition, ceasefire monitors have been blocked on multiple occasions by government troops from investigating incidents of reported violence,” he said.