South Sudan ambassador to Uganda Simon Juach. | Photo: Emmanuel Akile/Eye Radio

South Sudan’s envoy to Uganda says a comment he made months ago on the border dispute between South Sudan, and Uganda is not related to the new East African Community map.

Ambassador Simon Juac distanced himself from a video purporting that an East African Community map showing new member Somalia while scrapping the Abyei and Ilemi Triangle out of South Sudan was approved at the recent meeting in Uganda.

He said his earlier comment in October over the border dispute between neighbouring communities of Moyo and Kajo-Keji County has nothing to do with the alleged display of a regional map during President Kiir’s visit to Entebbe last week.

The diplomat is reacting to a social media post of a three-minute video clip purporting that the Head of State endorsed a wrong map of the East African Community to be used.

In an animated text, South Sudan Global TV [SSGTV] said the previous correct map was used, but now it’s replaced with an incorrect one that sees South Sudan’s territories especially the Elemi Triangle incorporated into Kenya.

The report allegedly featured Eye Radio’s October interview with the Ambassador as he reacted to the border dispute between the inhabitants of Kajo-Keji County and those of Uganda’s Moyo district months ago.

In the interview, Ambassador Juac said Sudan, from which South Sudan seceded in 2011, gained independence on January 1^st, 1956 from the British Protectorate – about seven years before Uganda.

According to him, the borders since Sudan’s independence will remain the borders of South Sudan and will be addressed through a border commission.

As such, Ambassador Juac says, the remarks he made neither had a link to the East Africa Community nor the recent summit in Uganda.

“I would like to comment on the video that currently circulating on a website called SSGTV is a three minutes video, that purports to say there was the approval of the wrong EAC map,” Ambassador Juac said.

“The interview I did with Eye Radio in August was a different interview where we were talking about the border dispute between the countries in the East Africa region, the border issue between Kajo-Keji and Moyo in Uganda, the issues in Magwi, and the issues in the elemi triangle has nothing to do with EAC, and it has nothing to do with the recent summit of East Africa,” he said.