- US president Barack Obama meets with South Sudanese president Salva Kiir Mayardit in New York on 21 September 2011 (Photo: AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
February 28, 2016 (JUBA) - South Sudanese government has welcomed the latest diplomatic shift by the government of the United States (US) to defer proposed sanctions of arms embargo on South Sudan. United Kingdom (UK) this week proposed an arms embargo to be imposed on the war-ravaged country by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
UK, one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, which received a briefing on Thursday on the humanitarian situation in South Sudan, said it was time to impose the sanctions. Ambassador Matthews Rycroft of the UK Mission to the UN told the council on Friday that continuing fighting in South Sudan demonstrated the need for an immediate arms embargo.
“In South Sudan, half the population is in need of humanitarian assistance. It is clear that despite the Peace Agreement, the continued fighting is further entrenching the humanitarian crisis. That is why the UK is calling for an arms embargo now,” Rycroft was quoted as saying in multiple media outlets.
He also said individuals seen as obstacle to peace aimed at ending 21 months of the civil war in South Sudan should also become targets of sanctions.
However, US, another traditional ally of UK, opposed the timing of the sanctions, saying there was need to give time to the opposing parties in the August 2015 peace agreement to implement the deal.
South Sudanese minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation, Barnaba Marial Benjamin, told Sudan Tribune on Sunday that the government appreciated and commended the latest shift in position of the US to push for deferral of sanctions in order to allow the parties implement the peace agreement.
“The government of the republic of South Sudan appreciates and commends the government and the people of the United States for their support to the government of the republic of South Sudan and its people, to stand together in the implementation of the peace agreement. The parties to the peace agreement need support, not punishment. Sanctions will not help,” Benjamin told Sudan Tribune.
Gordon Buay, one of the senior South Sudanese diplomats at the mission to the United States in Washington DC, also told Sudan Tribune in a separate interview that the government commended US for being against the UK proposal of sanctions.
Buay said UK believed that adoption of such a measure would make it illegal for nations around the world to sell weapons to South Sudanese government and opposition faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM-IO) led by Riek Machar, first vice president designate.
Media reports indicate that the proposal by the United Kingdom has the backing of Angola, an elected member of the Security Council, which reportedly introduced the proposal to the Security Council.
Angola’s UN Ambassador, Ismael A. Gaspar Martins, was quoted as saying, "The situation evolves and you have to evolve with the situation. Now what is necessary to do is an arms embargo."
"We have proposed and I hope everybody goes with it," said Martins.
Veto-power China and Russia said last month they were opposed to an arms embargo on South Sudan, but the two nations previously declined to use their veto power in 2014 when a number of South Sudanese generals came up for sanctions.
It is not yet clear how they would vote if the arms embargo actually comes to a vote at the Security Council.