South Sudan foes agree for truce

Bloomberg

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar agreed to a permanent cease-fire within 72 hours and signalled they’re prepared for a second attempt at a power-sharing government to end a ruinous four-year civil war.
The conflict in the East African nation has claimed tens of thousands of lives, driven about 4 million people from their homes and slashed oil production to about 135,000 barrels per day from 350,000 barrels in 2011, when it seceded from Sudan.
Previous ceasefire agreements made by the government and rebels have quickly been violated.
Kiir and Machar still have to agree on the details of the power-sharing deal before they leave the current talks in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Once they confirm that so-called “bridging proposal,” there’ll be 120 days before South Sudan’s new 36-month transitional government takes effect, the pact showed. Elections would be held after that period.
The deal, brokered under the mediation of Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir, would be the second time Kiir and Machar, his former deputy, have agreed to share powers.
A pact signed in 2015 collapsed just weeks into its enactment the following year and ushered in a new wave of violence.
Machar has since lived in exile, and his meetings with Kiir this month were their first in about two years.
Landlocked South Sudan’s oil, which Sudan exports via a pipeline and is crucial to both nations’ economies, was also mentioned in the agreement. The two countries will “immediately rehabilitate the oil fields,” according to the pact.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Al-Derdiri Mohamed Ahmed also announced the details of a security agreement between the two sides, including releasing prisoners of war and opening access for humanitarian relief.
The pact covers the government forces, troops belonging to Machar’s Sudan’s People Liberation Movement In Opposition and other rebel groups in sub-Saharan Africa’s third-biggest crude producer.