‘They are destroying the whole process,’ Yohanis Musa Pauk, spokesman for the rebel delegation loyal to former vice president Riek Machar, said in Addis Ababa where the talks are being held.
‘But we will not leave (the talks). We still have hope that they will come to their senses,’ he said after the government refused a key rebel demand for the release of 11 detained politicians allied to Machar.
Meetings in neighbouring Ethiopia are aimed at brokering a ceasefire to halt three weeks of violence that has killed at least 1,000 people and driven 200,000 from their homes.
The fighting, often along ethnic faultlines, has pitted President Salva Kiir’s SPLA government forces against the rebels loyal to Machar.
The talks opened on Tuesday but quickly took a break for consultations in Juba about the fate of the 11 detainees, arrested last year over an alleged coup plot. The rebels had initially demanded their release before the negotiations.
South Sudan’s government chief negotiator, Nhial Deng Nhial, told a press conference in Juba that Kiir made it clear to a visiting team of east African envoys that the detainees would not be released immediately.
‘But we will not leave (the talks). We still have hope that they will come to their senses,’ he said after the government refused a key rebel demand for the release of 11 detained politicians allied to Machar.
Meetings in neighbouring Ethiopia are aimed at brokering a ceasefire to halt three weeks of violence that has killed at least 1,000 people and driven 200,000 from their homes.
The fighting, often along ethnic faultlines, has pitted President Salva Kiir’s SPLA government forces against the rebels loyal to Machar.
The talks opened on Tuesday but quickly took a break for consultations in Juba about the fate of the 11 detainees, arrested last year over an alleged coup plot. The rebels had initially demanded their release before the negotiations.
South Sudan’s government chief negotiator, Nhial Deng Nhial, told a press conference in Juba that Kiir made it clear to a visiting team of east African envoys that the detainees would not be released immediately.