ADDIS ABABA // South Sudan’s warring parties began negotiations on Friday to end nearly three weeks of conflict that has left thousands feared dead and taken the world’s youngest nation to the brink of civil war.
Fighting intensified as the army moved on a key rebel-held town, even as government and rebel negotiating teams gathered at a luxury hotel in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
“We have enough forces who will defeat the rebels within 24 hours,” the army spokesman Philip Aguer said in South Sudan, with reports of heavy battles involving tanks and artillery on the outskirts of Bor, a dusty town that has already exchanged hands three times since fighting began.
The US Embassy in South Sudan ordered a further pullout of staff and urged all citizens to leave on an evacuation flight it had organised because of the “deteriorating security situation”.
The continuing battles prompted the top UN aid official in South Sudan, Toby Lanzer, to warn that soldiers and rebels must protect civilians and aid workers, or risk worsening a situation he described as “critical”.
But in the calm of the hotel in Addis Ababa, rivals met special envoys from regional nations, ahead of direct talks that sources suggested may not take place until today at the earliest.
Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said the regional East African bloc IGAD that is helping to broker a deal “was committed to support in any way possible”.
Thousands of people are feared to have been killed in the fighting, pitting army units loyal to the president, Salva Kiir, against a loose alliance of ethnic militia forces and mutinous army commanders nominally headed by the former vice president Riek Machar.
Fighting erupted on December 15 when Mr Kiir accused Mr Machar of attempting a coup.
Mr Machar denied this, in turn accusing the president of conducting a violent purge of his opponents and refusing to hold direct talks with Mr Kiir.
* Agence France-Presse
