August 4th 2018 (Nyamilepedia) –  The South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA), a consortium of nine South Sudanese Armed and none-armed opposition groups said in a statement seen by the Nyamilepedia that they will not sign the peace agreement on Sunday.
Last month, Â the Sudanese mediation under the auspices of President Omar Hassan Ahmed Al-Bashir said the South Sudanese parties will sign a final peace agreement on August 5th after the South Sudan government and SPLM-IO under Machar initialed the proposed agreement.
The South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) except the splinter group led by the Gen. Peter Gatdet Yaka, decided to abstain saying their concerns and main consensus issues have not been incorporated by the mediation into the new peace proposal.
In a joint statement issued on Friday by the South Sudan opposition Alliance, the group is not ready to sign a peace agreement saying most of the issues of their concern were not incorporated into the agreement.
“In view of this development, we would like to inform the public that we cannot sign the said agreement in its present form. However, we stand ready to ink it if and when our concerns are addressed by the Mediators as above,” the statement said.
The alliance said in the statement that they met the Sudanese Foreign Minister who is also the chief mediator to present to him the issues which they said would be bracketed so that they would sign the agreement with reservation on Sunday by but they were informed by the Sudanese Foreign Minister that he had consulted with the parties and that the government in Juba had refused any new changes to the agreement.
“We met H.E. the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Sudan who is also the Chief Mediator on 29 July 2018 and presented to him the issues we believe should be bracketed for us to be able to sign the Agreement on Outstanding Governance Issues on Sunday the 5th of August. He promised to look into these points. Yesterday, the 2nd of August, His Excellency the Minister informed us that he has made consultations with the Parties and that Juba has rejected to have our concerns taken on board and as such there was nothing he could do,” the statement said.
