South Sudan’s armed opposition continued its boycott of peace negotiations in Addis Ababa for a second day on Saturday, after five other groups launched the talks under auspices of the East African organization IGAD on Friday.
The SPLM-in-Opposition led by Riek Machar had agreed per a 10 June summit deal to take part in ‘inclusive’ talks on the formation of an interim government, but nonetheless failed to join the talks when they actually launched on Friday.
Five other groups joined the talks, namely: the government, the SPLM-G11 ‘Former Detainees,’ civil society representatives, the clergy, and the other non-armed opposition parties.
Hussein Mar, the official spokesman of the SPLM-IO negotiating team, told Radio Tamazuj in an interview on Saturday that they persist in their boycott of the negotiations.
He explained their complaint that the IGAD mediation brought seven people from civil society from Juba, seven representatives of political parties from Juba, but no representatives of civil society or political parties from the diaspora, displaced camps or refugee camps.
The spokesman said that this was the reason for their boycott of the negotiations. He said also they wrote a message to the Ethiopian Prime Minister, who chairs IGAD, and the IGAD mediation to demand direct dialogue with the government delegation without the presence of the other parties.
SPLM-IO has suggested that the direct involvement of other groups may hinder the talks on formation of an interim government within the specified 60 day deadline. Apparently their concern is that the armed opposition are being treated as an equal stakeholder to other groups rather than the main party in the process.
Meanwhile, the military spokesman of the SPLM-IO also claimed on Saturday that government security personnel prevented two members of their group from traveling to Addis Ababa to participate in an event linked to the peace talks.
Lul Ruai, the spokesman, identified the two as Colonel Daniel Gatbel and Colonel Gathon Jual, whom he described as members of the Monitoring and Verification Teams (MVT) deployed in Malakal and Bentiu.
Representatives of both warring parties as well as military observers detailed from other nations to the IGAD teams are taking part in the ceasefire mission.
“They were supposed to travel to Addis Ababa on evening flight in order to attend a very important training on monitoring process. Instead, their passports were confiscated at Juba International Airport by Salva’s security operatives and were nearly killed had it not been of the intervention of members of Joint Technical Committee (JTC),” he claimed.
“The duo have been returned to JTC compound. Preventing members of MVTs from travelling freely is a serious violation of Cessation of Hostilities and directly hinders operationalization of the monitoring mechanism,” he added.
The spokesman said the incident was a sign of Kiir’s unwillingness to make a peaceful settlement work.
File phot: Hussein Mar Nyuot, SPLM-IO spokesman (Gurtong)