ADDIS ABABA: The two figures at the centre of the civil war that has ravaged South Sudan are scheduled to meet on Wednesday for the first time in nearly two years.

Ethiopia, which has helped broker the meeting, says rebel leader Riek Machar, who fled South Sudan in July 2016, is expected to meet face-to-face with the country’s president, Salva Kiir. The official scope of the talks is broad – to build bridges between the two. But analysts say the outcome remains unclear given their notoriously volatile relationship, and there is doubt whether the meeting will even take place.

Once comrades-in-arms in the fight for independence, Kiir and Machar experienced a bitter falling out, a development that played a key part in the civil war that blights the future of the world’s youngest state. Tens of thousands of people have been killed and nearly a third of its population of 12 million have been driven out of their homes, many of them to the brink of starvation.

The two will meet at the invitation of Ethiopia’s new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who also chairs the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) regional bloc that has taken the lead in thus-far fruitless peace negotiations.