South Sudan’s Presidential Affairs Minister Joseph Bangasi Bakasoro has said President Salva Kiir Mayardit has powers to transfer the Rome Peace Talks to Nairobi, Kenya.
The Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic association dedicated to social service based in Rome, Italy, has been mediating talks between the Government of South Sudan and rebel and political groups that did not sign the 2018 revitalized peace agreement.
According to Minister Bakasoro, the president has the liberty to transfer the talks to any location of his choosing because, for the last four years, the Rome Peace Talks have come to naught.
He told Radio Tamazuj Thursday that Kiir wrote a letter requesting Kenyan President William Ruto to take over and host the peace talks.
“The president has decided to transfer the talks to our neighboring African country and we hope something good will happen in Kenya,” he stated. “We are still waiting for a reply from the Kenyan authorities because the issue is not in our hands but in the hands of the Kenyan President.”
Bakasoro said that President Kiir is working on the list of government representatives for the talks and insisted that there is no ulterior motive in moving the talks to Kenya.
“There is no hidden thing at all in this process because if we finalize everything, we will move to Nairobi and if you are there, you will later on find out how many people and who are attending the peace talks,” he said.
The minister said President Kiir does not require any permission from the Community Sant’Egidio in Rome to transfer the talks to Nairobi.
Asked about why some of the holdout groups have no information about the planned transfer of the peace talks from Rome to Nairobi, Bakasoro responded, “This question deserves to be answered by the members of the holdout groups who are refusing.”
“If they refuse, you can ask them why they refuse to attend the peace talks,” he quipped.
The peace talks between the Government of South Sudan and holdout groups, also known as the South Sudan Opposition Movements Alliance (SSOMA), in Rome, Italy suffered several setbacks including refusal by a section of the hold-out groups to attend them at some point and the government withdrawing participation in the past.
The alliance comprises the National Salvation Front (NAS) under Gen. Thomas Cirillo, the South Sudan United Front/Army (SSUF) led by former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Paul Malong Awan, National Democratic Movement-Patriotic Front (NDM-PF) and South Sudan National Movement for Change (SSNMC).