The Community Sant’Egidio has said that they will send a delegation to Juba to resolve the issue of the government suspending its participation in the Rome talks. 

President Salva Kiir, yesterday while addressing the first joint session of the reconstituted parliament, again blamed the South Sudan Opposition Movements Alliance (SSOMA) for road ambushes and attacks and said the government has paused participation in the Rome talks until such attacks cease.

“Now that SSOMA, specifically the NAS elements continue to violate these commitments, we have decided to pause the ongoing Sant’Egidio led Rome Peace Initiative,” President Kiir told parliament yesterday. “Our pursuit of an inclusive peace should never be taken for a weakness and used as a window to kill the innocent.”

Dr. Paolo Impagliazzo, the secretary-general of the Community of Sant'Egidio and the in charge of the Rome initiative for South Sudan, told Radio Tamazuj Tuesday afternoon that they will work to resume the peace discussions “as soon as possible” and hope that the suspension does not lead to more violence. 

“We hope it (suspension of Rome talks) means no more violence and of course we are doing our best to avoid any violence in the country and it is a suspension, a pause, as President Salva Kiir said in his statement (to parliament) yesterday. And so we have to work to resume the discussion,” Dr. Impagliazzo said.

Asked if the Community Sant’Egidio had been formally notified by the government of South Sudan about suspending their participation in the Rome talks, Dr. Impagliazzo said, “We received a letter from Dr. Barnaba Marial (presidential affairs minister) about the government suspending its participation in the Rome Initiative two days ago.”

He said that President Salva Kiir reiterated that the government is suspending participation in the Rome initiative until the SSOMA stops attacking civilians and laying road ambushes.

“We had to suspend the initiative. We were to have a workshop with the CTSAMVM in Addis Ababa at the beginning of September but we had to postpone it,” Dr. Impagliazzo said. “We are in contact with all of them (SSOMA) and we got the SSOMA (Gen. Cirillo) statement saying that they are not responsible for the ambushes on the Juba-Nimule road. This is the position of the SSOMA representative.” 

He said they are going to discuss with the SSOMA representatives before the end of the week on the impasse and that dialogue is the only way to stop the violence. 

“For us, the most important thing is to protect civilians and we believe that political dialogue is the only means to stop the violence. We will do our best to resume as soon as possible the political dialogue and we believe it is the best thing to do to avoid further violence in the country,” Dr. Impagliazzo said.

He added that the mediators believe that the participation of the SSOMA representatives in the ceasefire monitoring body, CTSAMVM, is important so that they are part of the mechanism to monitor the violation of the cessation of hostilities.