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Russian envoy hopes talks on South Sudan won’t be stalled

MOSCOW, January 05, 15:21 /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s special envoy to Africa, Mikhail Margelov, believes the warring parties in talks on South Sudan won’t drag feet and talks will be successfully completed before the African Union summit in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) late in January.

“The official start of talks between the warring parties in the South Sudanese domestic conflict gives hope that the process will go quicker and will yield a positive result,” said Margelov commenting on the start of the talks. However, the Russian senator fears that the warring parties could try to drag feet on the settlement until the summit. “And then, the South Sudan conflict will be the top on the agenda,” he said, regretting that in this case “the African Union will once again be solving local issues, instead of global problems facing Africa”.

“And this situation will prevent the African Union from foregoing the role of ‘an African fire fighter’ to become ‘the main headquarters’ in working out the African strategy,” he said.

“Let us hope this won’t happen. All the more as many African leaders, especially Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, work hard towards a positive result of the talks,” the senator stated.

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