S.Sudan to form transitional government on Nov. 12

By Benjamin Takpiny

JUBA, South Sudan (AA) - South Sudan’s transitional government of national unity will be formed on Nov. 12, officials said Friday.

“The government is delivering and implementation of the agreement is going on well,” Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth told reporters after a Cabinet meeting in the capital Juba.

“We are delivering and by Nov. 12 the revitalized transitional government will be established as in the extended agreement,” he said.

Lueth said the government also urged a group of opposition leaders who met in the Netherlands last week to abandon their “anti-peace” plans.

He said they should “join the peace agreement instead of going around and causing unnecessary havoc and suffering to the people of South Sudan.”

South Sudan slid into crisis when President Salva Kiir sacked Riek Machar as vice president in December 2013 on suspicion of plotting a coup, followed by a protracted civil war that claimed the lives of tens of thousands and forced 4 million people to flee their homes.

Before a 2018 peace deal, five years of fighting between the two leaders crippled the country, with millions displaced and almost 400,000 people dead from violence and disease.