The speculation was serious enough to prompt South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir to visit the headquarters of Sudan’s army (SPLA) this week to warn that any successful coup leaders would be isolated internationally, according to the Sudan Tribune.
During a visit to New York to meet with potential investors, Machar laughed off the rumors of a coup as not a serious threat and said that a recently detained general had not been arrested for planning a coup, but for other issues.
“When I first heard of it, I dismissed it,” he told Reuters. “The nature of the state of South Sudan is borne out of an exercise of (the) right to self-determination. … It would be unwise for military officers to say ‘there is a takeover.'”
South Sudan declared independence from Sudan in July 2011. The move came six months after a referendum agreed to under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war that left more than 2 million people dead.
Distrust between the neighbors runs deep and tensions erupted into fighting along the border in April, when South Sudan’s army briefly occupied the Heglig oilfield, which is vital to Sudan’s economy.
The two countries agreed late last month to set up a demilitarized border zone and resume oil exports from the landlocked south after South Sudan shut them down in a dispute with Sudan over transit fees.
The deal failed to resolve problems including where to draw the final border, what to do with the disputed Abyei area and how to end rebellions in both countries that each government blames the other for backing.