Members of South Sudan’s holdout groups at the Nairobi Tumaini Initiative Tuesday briefed Kenya’s President William Ruto on the progress of the talks.

Lual Dau, the Secretary General of the South Sudan Opposition Movements Alliance (SSOMA) faction, said the Kenyan leader reiterated his commitment towards achieving peace in South Sudan during the meeting at the State House, Nairobi.

The opposition leaders in attendance included Gen Paul Malong and Gen Pagan Amum.

Dau said that President Ruto vowed to put more effort into bringing lasting peace in South Sudan during the long meeting.

“We are currently engaged in a series of consultations among the government delegation, the opposition, civil societies and all the stakeholders. We want to ensure that the Tumaini Initiative brings lasting and inclusive peace,” Dau explained.

The opposition official believes that the SPLM-IO delegates will rejoin the Nairobi peace talks soon.

“The talks are not only direct, but include communications with the government, the opposition, the civil societies and all the stakeholders

“Our country will only succeed if we are all in consensus about the future,” he said.

The opposition official emphasized the importance of unity to achieve peace and development.

“Before the withdrawal of the SPLM-IO delegation from the talks, we seemed to have finished all the files, except the power sharing one,” he said.

“We were focusing on the implementation matrix because we wanted the Tumaini consensus to be different from all other agreements. So we want to ensure that the Tumaini agreement will have a proper and a clear timeline,” he concluded. 

The peace talks started in Nairobi on May 9, but halted last month after representatives of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) led by First Vice President Riek Machar walked out.

They argued that the protocols under discussion would undermine the provisions of the 2018 peace deal. Officially known as the Revitalised Agreement, it was signed between President Salva Kiir’s SPLM and SPLM-IO and other political factions.

The negotiations in Nairobi were meant to bring in groups that had stayed away from the revitalized peace deal.