By William Madouk<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
South Sudan United Front Army (SSUF\/A) leader, Gen. Paul Malong Awan has accepted Kenyan President William Ruto\u2019s mediation role in the \u2018Rome talks.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Spokesperson for the South Sudan United Front\/Army (SSUF\/A), Garang Malual, said in a statement that Malong expressed acceptance after Ruto wrote a letter informing him of Kenya\u2019s intension to mediate the talks.<\/p>\n \u201cGen. Paul has indeed replied to the letter accepting Kenya’s mediating of the peace talks,\u201d Malual added.<\/p>\n According to Malual, President Ruto in a letter showed Kenya government\u2019s readiness to start mediation anytime from now.<\/p>\n He explained that the leaders of other members of holdout groups would also respond to Ruto on their parties\u2019 behalf.<\/p>\n Ruto reportedly extended letters to the leaders of the Non-Signatory South Sudan Opposition Group (NSSOG) expressing his government’s readiness to mediate peace talks.<\/p>\n In December last year, President Salva Kiir asked Ruto to mediate the talks between no-signatory (hold out) groups and the government.<\/p>\n However, the National Salvation Front (NAS), under Gen. Thomas Cirilo, rejected the initiative, citing that Nairobi is not safe.<\/p>\n Pagan Amum, the leader of the Real SPLM and a member of the NSSOG holdout group coalition, also reportedly expressed reservation for the proposed Nairobi talks.<\/p>\n Non-signatories are groups that did not sign the 2018 revitalized peace agreement for the resolution of conflict in South Sudan.<\/p>\n The Community of Sant’Egidio in Rome initiated negotiations between the holdout groups and the government in 2020, aiming to resolve years of conflict in South Sudan.<\/p>\n During the initial negotiations, the parties signed a declaration of principles as a step towards achieving a political agreement.<\/p>\n However, despite these efforts, a conclusive political agreement has yet to be reached.<\/p>\n The discussions were meant to address the root causes of the conflict. Unfortunately, disagreements between the parties have persisted, preventing any significant progress from being made.<\/p>\n Initially, the parties were scheduled to reconvene for further discussions in May 2023, following a deadlock in March. but the parties never reported back for discussion until the office of the president revealed the shifting of the discussion.<\/p>\n The holdout groups include Real SPLM, led by Pagan Amum; the National Salvation Front (NAS) of Thomas Cirilo; the South Sudan United Front (SSUF\/A), led by Paul Malong; and the National Democratic Movement-Patriotic Front (NDM-PF) of Emmanuel Ajawin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By William Madouk South Sudan United Front Army (SSUF\/A) leader, Gen. Paul Malong Awan has accepted Kenyan President William Ruto\u2019s mediation role in the \u2018Rome talks.\u201d Spokesperson for the South Sudan United Front\/Army (SSUF\/A), Garang Malual, said in a statement that Malong expressed acceptance after Ruto wrote a letter[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":20978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Gen.-Paul-Malong-Awan-Courtesy-Photo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20979,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20977\/revisions\/20979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}