The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO) is seeking charter aircraft to bring their commanders to Pagak in eastern Upper Nile State after the United Nations refused to help bring them to the conference.

The rebel movement is seeking to convene its leaders in one place so as to deliberate on whether to accept a proposed power-sharing agreement with the SPLM-Juba faction.

SPLM-IO controls parts of Unity, Jonglei and Upper Nile states. Delegates from some of these areas are unable to reach Pagak either because of the remoteness of where they are or because they would have to cross territories controlled by the rival SPLM-Juba faction.

James Gadet, spokesman for the SPLM-IO chairman Riek Machar, said that the transportation issue has been a ‘challenge’ holding up the conference at Pagak.

“We will find a way to get charter planes to transport them; we will try to find a way to pay for charter planes including asking our citizen supporters on the ground to contribute,” he told Radio Miraya.

The UN Mission in South Sudan disclosed on Thursday that it declined a request by the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to help facilitate transportation of the SPLM-IO delegates to the conference and back.

Joseph Contreras, a spokesman of the UN Mission said, “Many of these delegates are located in areas deemed to be of extremely high risk for our pilots and the company that we contract to operate some of the flights does not permit its pilots to fly to those areas.”

“Also in the past, the mission has been accused by both parties to the crisis of transporting personnel and supplies belonging to their opponents so we turned down the request from the Special Envoys of the IGAD regional bloc.”

File photo: Peter Gadet, commander of SPLM-IO forces in Unity State

Related:

UN declines mediators’ request to transport commanders to Pagak conference (28 Nov.)