Saitoti - Kenya pledges Sh200m for Southern Sudan

By David Ochami

The Government of Kenya has pledged Sh200million to train South Sudan's nascent civil servants this financial year and promised additional assistance three days to the historic separation referendum in South Sudan.

Acting Foreign Affairs minister George Saitoti defended Kenya’s role in the search for peace in South Sudan saying it will negotiate post-referendum financial aid with Juba after June but refused to confirm if the Nairobi authorities have supplied military aid to the autonomous region that is set to declare independence in July after the referendum on Sunday.

He said Kenya has disbursed the equivalent of US$3.5million to South Sudan for "capacity building and training for the nascent civil service of the semi-autonomous government in Juba" under a Technical Assistance Agreement [signed by Juba and Nairobi in 2006 and renewed in 2009].

Saitoti has said in Nairobi that as a mediator and guarantor of South Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Sudan’s decades of war it expects the National Congress Party (NCP) and Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) to solve pending issues including a referendum for the disputed Abyei region before July.

Saitoti praised President Omar Hassan al Bashir and South Sudan’s Salva Kiir Mayardiit and announced that Kenya will retain friendly ties with Khartoum and Juba "regardless of the outcome of the referendum."

"With only four days (by Wednesday) before the historic vote," Saitoti said the government of Kenya "calls for a peaceful, free and fair referendum" and urged the leaders of the SPLM and NCP to "preach messages of peace and restraint as they campaign across the ten states of Southern Sudan", Khartoum and other parts where South Sudanese will be voting.

Saitoti said Kenya which chairs the Igad subcommittee on South Sudan has, historically, been, actively, engaged with promoting peace in South Sudan beginning with the Moi government through to the Kibaki administration leading to the CPA mediation between 2002 and 2005 through its signing in 2005 in Nairobi.

He said Moi rejuvenated international peace efforts in South Sudan and initiated CPA mediation with Kibaki ensuring its conclusion in his first term.

Saitoti said that the Kibaki regime has reinforced the CPA by engaging Kiir and al Bashir and at the African Union.