President Kiir’s Speech during the Peace Deal with Riek Machar in Addis
Address by Salva Kiir Mayardit, 9 May 2014:
Hailemariam Dessalegn, the Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Dr. Riek Machar, all the protocols observed.
Your Excellency, I accepted your invitation to negotiations on the first day you visited me in Juba, and on the first day you sent your representatives to Juba. It has been repeated that we should (stop) all fighting and then come to talks – by many quarters. I have been called on the telephones. Many special envoys from Europe, from America, from all Africa came to talk to me on the necessity to stop fighting and bring peace back to South Sudan.
It is today that we have met. I don’t want to bore you with the reading of whatever I have in front of me, and I want to reiterate that we are not here to bear witness of what we have done in our country, whether you are on the wrong side or you are on the right side. That is not what I came here for.
If I go into defend myself, to repeat what my brother Riek was saying, I can talk more, elaborating all what he has said. But that is not what we came for. In my speeches before our independence, when I was still the first vice president in the Republic of Sudan, I have said many times assuring people of South Sudan that I will not take you back to war again.
This is my saying, and everybody knows, and I have been in a position of making peace with anybody. Now that we have signed this document under the auspices of IGAD, I want to assure you that I am my part – the party that I am leading and the army that I am leading – will implement this agreement without any fail. And if the MVM [Monitoring and Verification Mechanism] were to be on the ground tomorrow we will hear from them who is the violator. That has not yet come.
I want to assure you once more that people of South Sudan do not need war. I thought what we were for was the development of our country, and was the reconciliation of the people who have been torn apart during the long civil war. And to make good relations with our neighbors starting from the neighboring countries and then we go to the whole world.
We have not failed in that, organizing ourselves in our country is our priority. And that we will have to do it. I don’t want to talk about whether there was a coup or no coup. A gun does not fire itself alone. Somebody must pull the trigger for the bullet to come out. History will say this.
And the fact is that in any military coup the coup leaders and those who were to be overthrown – they don’t all survive. Some die immediately, especially the military commanders who were responsible for execution. The fact that some of our comrades were arrested and detained and did not die, does not mean that there was no coup. I personally refused that nobody should die. Anybody dying on the front line – there is no question about that – but after arrest, nobody should die. During the arrest or after the arrest. God knows.
The best thing, which we have done today is that we have ended this black page of our history. And if we continue to work according to what we have signed, yes, this bleeding will stop. Nobody will again open fire on another person.
I personally know that I was elected by all these people who are dying today. These are the people who voted for me. I have no reason to turn against them, to kill them. I have no reason to leave them to continue to bleed when I am responsible for the whole nation. The country called South Sudan, I am the president, to everybody. Those who are against me, and those who support me. I am the president of South Sudan, and I must always remain in that position as the president. The leader of that country.
I accept whatever bad or good that can happen to that country, and I must also get a solution to it. Had we stopped this thing, very early from the beginning, more lives could have not been lost. Now that we have come back to our senses that dialogue is the only answer to whatever conflict we have, I think we will continue to move to the right direction.
I want to assure you, your Excellency Prime Minister, and IGAD countries, the African Union team, the Troika, and the whole world that had been concerned about what is happening in South Sudan, I must assure you that we acknowledge your support that you exerted and we would not let you down, we will work with you to implement what we have now committed ourselves to.
I am happy to conclude this agreement on the 9th of May in Addis Ababa, which coincidentally according to the information I got is the birthday of our great friend and leader that we lost prematurely, Comrade Former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. This is his birthday. And I think if there is a good presence – a gift that we have given to him to honor him in this grave where he’s resting it is this agreement that we have signed today.
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