Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni, said he would pull troops out of South Sudan only if regional forces secured its capital Juba from rebel attack, as fighting in the world’s newest state entered its second year.Reuters report:
Yoweri Museveni, who backed South Sudan’s now-ruling SPLM in its decades-long conflict with Sudan before independence in 2011, sent his troops across the border at Juba’s invitation shortly after fighting began in mid-December last year.
Since then, Uganda’s military presence has been a bone of contention during drawn-out peace talks in the Ethiopian capital between President Salva Kiir and rebels led by his sacked ex-deputy Riek Machar.
Machar has demanded Uganda’s urgent withdrawal.
“The problem is not with Uganda. The problem is peace among (South) Sudanese, and in order to not leave a vacuum we agreed that other IGAD countries should deploy and now they are deploying,” Museveni said in a press conference, referring to east Africa’s IGAD bloc, which is mediating the talks.
Museveni spoke alongside Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in Addis Ababa, where he arrived for a two-day state visit.
