The Abyei Area Administration have announced their readiness to participate in a peace conference with the Misseriya tribe in Aweil town in South Sudan’s Northern Bahr al Ghazal State.

This news came in a meeting between officials from the Abyei administration and the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) yesterday.

Alor Dou El Beit, Abyei Area’s information official, told Radio Tamazuj that the meeting discussed several issues including citizens' security, development, and peaceful coexistence between the Ngok Dinka and Misseriya tribes.

He hinted that the peace conference scheduled to take place in Aweil town will be successful, while downplaying the importance of the ongoing arrangements by the AJOC committee for a separate peace meeting in Addis Ababa.

Sudan’s co-chair of the Abyei Joint Oversight Committee (AJOC) previously announced that a meeting of traditional leaders with the Dinka Ngok was scheduled to be held in Addis Ababa at the end of May.

The high-level meeting between the Dinka Ngok and Misseriya would have been the first of its kind between the two sides since the killing of Dinka Paramount Chief Kuol Deng Kuol in May 2013. Dinka Ngok leaders previously demanded his killers be brought to book before any inter-communal dialogue takes place in Addis Ababa.

File photo: Paramount chief Bulabek Deng Kuol