S Sudan leader names rebels to parliament

Juba – South Sudan President Salva Kiir on Friday named 50 lawmakers from the rebel movement and agreed to share ministerial posts with his rivals in line with a peace deal aimed at ending a two-year civil war.
Kiir announced the appointment of 50 members of parliament named by the rebel side in a broadcast over state radio.
Festus Mogae, a former Botswana president who heads the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (et up by regional bloc Igad to ensure the peace deal is implemented, said the government would be given 16 ministerial posts – including defence, national security, finance and justice – and the rebels 10 posts, including oil and humanitarian affairs.
Widespread torture
A group of influential politicians known as the “former detainees”, who were jailed at the outbreak of fighting but later released, will get the posts of foreign affairs and transport, while cabinet affairs and agriculture will go to other political parties.
Both the government and rebel sides in South Sudan’s two-year conflict have been accused of perpetrating ethnic massacres, recruiting and killing children and carrying out widespread rape, torture and forced displacement of populations to “cleanse” areas of their opponents.
The conflict has triggered a humanitarian crisis with 2.3 million people forced from their homes and 4.6 million in need of emergency food aid. Tens of thousands have died and the economy is in ruins.