South Sudan President Refuses to Sign Peace Deal by Deadline

South Sudanese ruling party’s secretary-general Pagan Amum also signed the agreement, but diplomats said he did not represent the government.

Vice-President James Wani Igga is expected to take his place, a presidential spokesman said.

While rival parties in South Sudan agree to peace agreement, President Salva Kiir said he needs ‘more time’.

Even if the signing of the latest deal weren’t a matter of controversy, there is little to suggest that the prospect of peace would have persisted much beyond Monday’s deadline.

Kiir initially said he would not attend talks, complaining it was not possible to strike an effective deal because rebel forces have split.

Seyoum Mesfin, the mediator for the regional group IGAD, said Kiir’s side required two weeks before signing the peace deal that was accepted by the South Sudanese rebels.

Meanwhile Machar, the rebel leader, issued a statement Saturday that he wouldn’t sign the compromise deal because of last-minute changes made at a summit in Kampala last week by the leaders of Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Sudan.

South Sudan plunged into chaos in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to Kiir and defectors led by his former deputy, Machar, around the capital Juba.

Western powers including the U.S. and the United Kingdom had threatened…

“A peace that can not be sustained can not be signed”, Kiir told reporters.

After the signing, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, who is the chairman of the IGAD assembly of heads of state and government, described the agreement as “important and [a] step forward” in putting an end to the political deadlock the country has experienced in the past 20 months.

“I didn’t know that he was not going to sign”, he said. The two sides presented conflicting versions of Saturday’s clash in northern Mali, a region where the government is trying to damp down separatist tensions while simultaneously fighting Islamist insurgents.

The deal is intended to bring to an end 19 months of violent conflict which left tens of thousands of civilians dead and over one million more displaced in and out of the world’s newest country. Recent attacks have included castration, burning people alive and tying children together before slitting their throats.