Ethiopian PM warns South Sudan's warring leaders

Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn

The Ethiopian prime minister, who mediates peace talks between South Sudan's warring leaders, has warned them to resume negotiations.

Hailemariam Desalegn said on Friday that time was running out for a lasting deal in the violence-hit country.

"For every negotiation there is a limit, you cannot continue forever. When we believe it has come to a dead end then we have to do something else," Desalegn noted.

The latest round of peace talks between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa came to a halt in June as both sides refused to attend.

"We are giving them a chance to go for a negotiated settlement and if that doesn't happen, then obviously the region will not sit tight to see the process continue as people are killed," Desalegn warned.

South Sudan plunged into violence in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to Kiir and defectors led by Machar around the capital Juba.
The conflict soon turned into an all-out war between the army and defectors, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president’s Dinka tribe against Machar’s Nuer ethnic group.
The conflict has left thousands of South Sudanese dead and forced around 1.5 million people to flee their homes in the world’s youngest nation.
South Sudan gained independence in July 2011 after its people overwhelmingly voted in a referendum for a split from the North.
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