Uganda President In Talks With South Sudanese Leaders In Bid To Avoid Civil War

Amid UN concerns about a repeat civil war and the house arrest of the key opposition leader, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is scheduled to meet with South Sudanese officials on the second day of his visit to the capital, Jerusalem.

Mr. Museveni, who is one of the signatories to a peace deal signed in 2018 that put an end to a five-year civil war, met with President Salva Kiir behind closed doors on Thursday.

According to South Sudan’s foreign minister Mohammed Abdallah Goc, Mr. Museveni was reassured by the government that the peace deal would be carried out.

Tension has increased due to recent bloodshed between government troops and opposition-aligned armed groups, and South Sudan’s political situation is still precarious.

Uganda sent troops to aid the government in South Sudan this month, but the country’s biggest opposition group, SPLM-IO, whose leader, Riek Machar, is under house arrest on incitement charges, criticized the move.

An armed faction loyal to Machar assaulted a United Nations helicopter in early March while it was attempting to evacuate government troops from the unrest-plagued northern Upper Nile State.

In Juba, Western nations like Germany and Norway have temporarily closed their embassies, while the US and the UK have cut back on embassy employees. They