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JUBA, South Sudan | Xinhua | South Sudan’s negotiation team in the ongoing peace talks in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, said Friday that substantial progress had been made towards achieving lasting peace and stability in the world’s youngest nation.
Albino Mathom, the special envoy to South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and head of the delegation to the Nairobi peace talks, said that they had reached some important milestones with the opposition groups, expressing confidence in reaching a final deal soon.
“What we have agreed in Nairobi with the opposition is trust and confidence building measures that is a protocol by itself, economic recovery and management which means we will have accountability in the economy,” Mathom said at a briefing in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.
Mathom said other areas the negotiators had agreed on includes judicial reforms, transitional justice and accountability, permanent ceasefire, security arrangement and reform.
“Humanitarian assistance and the rest are pending and we are still negotiating, we are almost to reach an agreement with the opposition,” Mathom declared.
He said the people of South Sudan have suffered for a long period and as such, President Salva Kiir initiated the Nairobi talks to hasten the search for durable peace and the country’s rebuilding.
Michael Makuei Lueth, the information minister and a member of the negotiation team, said the Nairobi talks, also known as the Tumaini (Hope) Initiative, will boost implementation of the 2018 agreement on the resolution of the conflict in South Sudan.
Makuei said negotiators have identified weak institutions and funding shortfalls as the root cause of slow progress in the implementation of the 2018 peace agreement.
He believed the Nairobi talks will strengthen the 2018 agreement by including the holdout groups in the implementation mechanisms including the Joint Defense Board which will now be renamed the Security Sector Reform Oversight Commission with retired security officers to oversee the implementation.
The minister said the peace negotiators identified the National Transitional Committee (NTC) as not performing, so they decided to rename it National Implementation and Oversight Mechanism to oversee the performance of the security and governance sectors.
Makuei said another body comprising the donor community, regional blocs and the government will be formed to deposit funds for the implementation of the agreement, although the President and his deputy will determine the timeline and implementation matrix.
In December 2023, South Sudan President Salva Kiir reportedly asked his Kenyan counterpart President William Ruto to assume the lead in mediating peace talks. ■
