South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has appointed Dr Riek Machar First Vice-President, marking a major step in implementing the power-sharing agreement, but the rebel leader says he will only return to Juba once the peace deal is integrated into the Constitution, and security arrangements implemented.

President Kiir’s move has now opened doors for the formation of the Transitional Government of National Unity, which was scheduled for January 22, but aborted due to differences between the two partners on what to include in the transitional Constitution.

The partners had on January 7 agreed on portfolio balance with the government taking 16 ministerial posts, SPLM-IO 10, while the former detainees and other political parties got two posts each.

Dr Machar, who is in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, also wants the international community to provide logistics for the return of his 3,000 security personnel to the capital before he returns.

Lam Jok, the new Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM-IO) representative in Kenya, said it would take about three weeks for the conditions to be met if there were political goodwill.

“The appointment is a major positive step towards the implementation of the agreement. We now hope that other processes that precede the formation of the transitional government will follow soon,” said Mr Jok.

The government insists that the 28 states unilaterally created by President Kiir on October 2 last year must be incorporated into the transitional Constitution because it is what the people have demanded for years, while the SPLM-IO maintains that it would complicate the power-sharing provisions which were based on 10 states.

According to the Presidential legal adviser, Lawrence Korbandy, the 28 states were created to placate Greater Equatoria, who had threatened to rebel because they were shortchanged in the peace agreement.

He argued that the proposed administrative structures in the power-sharing arrangement under the Transitional Government of National Unity had cast aside Vice-President James Wani Igga (now the Second Vice President) who is from Equatorial but favoured Bahr-el-Ghazal of President Kiir and Upper Nile where rebel leader Dr Machar hails from.

The second sticking issue that could delay Dr Machar’s return to Juba is the lull in the implementation of security arrangement that starts with the demilitarisation of Juba.  The agreement provided that all troops move out of Juba — to a 25km radius — within 90 days of the signing, all except the joint integrated security force.

The security arrangement between the two partners agreed that President Kiir will retain 3,000 presidential guards while Dr Machar will have 2,000. This would be in addition to a 3,000 strong joint police integrated force with each side providing 1,500.