More UN peacekeepers arrive in South Sudan

JUBA, South Sudan – The first United Nations (UN) peacekeeping reinforcements arrived Friday, December 27, in South Sudan, where the government is said to have agreed an immediate ceasefire after nearly two weeks of heavy fighting with rebels.

Seventy-two members of a police contingent, moved from the Democratic Republic of Congo, arrived in the country, according to a UN spokesman in New York. They are the spearhead of what is to be 6,000 extra troops voted this week by the UN Security Council.

Once all the reinforcements are in, they will almost double the size of the UNMISS mission in the country to a total of up to 12,500 soldiers and 1,300 police.

That mission has so far been badly stretched as fighting has claimed thousands of lives since erupting December 15.

The UN says over 120,000 people have fled their homes, including 63,000 sheltering in UN peacekeeping bases, and neighboring nations and world powers feared South Sudan was sliding into civil war.

The UN reinforcements are flowing in as East African leaders acting as peace brokers announced that the government of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir had agreed to a ceasefire right away.

But the de facto leader of the rebels, Riek Machar – whom Kiir accuses of having tried to mount a coup after being sacked as vice president in July – has left ambiguous his own commitment to the ceasefire.

In a satellite telephone interview with the BBC from an undisclosed located, Machar said a mechanism was required to monitor any ceasefire.

“For the ceasefire to be credible there is need for a mechanism, or else we will be deceiving ourselves,” he said.

He also demanded that Kiir release all 11 of his political allies who were arrested right at the beginning of the unrest, while acknowledging that two of them had been freed.

The regional leaders brokering the end to hostilities have given Machar and Kiir 4 days to hold face-to-face talks and halt fighting, pledging unspecified “further action” if the civil war continued. – Rappler.com