From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sat Jul 10 2010 - 16:32:01 EDT
Sudan to consider north-south confederation
Sat Jul 10, 2010 7:03pm GMT
* North, south Sudan start negotiations before referendum
* Mbeki suggests four options for north-south relations
(Adds background paragraph 4)
By Andrew Heavens
KHARTOUM, July 10 (Reuters) - Northern and southern Sudanese leaders said on
Saturday they would consider forming a confederation or a common market if
southerners chose to declare independence in a forthcoming referendum.
Citizens of the oil-producing south are six months away from a vote on
whether to remain part of Sudan or split and become an independent state --
a plebiscite promised in a 2005 accord that ended decades of north-south
civil war.
Leaders from the dominant northern and southern parties began formal
negotiations on Saturday on issues including how they would divide oil
revenues after the referendum.
In the most detailed public statement to date on what Sudan might look like
after the vote, they told reporters they were considering four options
suggested by an African Union panel led by former South African president
Thabo Mbeki.
In one option "we considered the possibility of the creation of two
independent countries which negotiate a framework of cooperation which
extends to the establishment of shared governance institutions in a
confederal arrangement," said Mbeki, who spoke at the launch of negotiations
in Khartoum.
Another option was for two separate countries with shared "soft borders that
permit freedom of movement for both people and goods," said Mbeki.
The other two options, he said, were total separation -- with citizens
needing visas to cross the border -- and continued north-south unity, if
southerners chose that option in the referendum.
"These (the four options) will be part of the issues to be discussed by both
parties," Sayed el-Khatib, a senior member of north Sudan's National
Congress Party (NCP), told reporters.
RELATIONSHIP RESET
Pagan Amum, secretary general of the south's dominant Sudan People's
Liberation Movement (SPLM), said the referendum would allow the south to
"reset" its troubled relationship with the north, whether southerners chose
unity or separation.
"If the choice is separation, then we will be ensuring that there will be
good cooperation between the two independent states. It could take the form
of a confederation. It could take the form of a common market," he said.
The parties said they would spend the next months working out how they would
share oil and other assets, as well as the burden of Sudan's debt, after the
vote.
Also on the agenda was the citizenship of their populations -- campaign
group Refugees International said last month that southerners in the north
and northerners in the south might be left stateless and vulnerable to
attacks after a split.
Amum said the parties also had to resolve other issues before the vote
including the position of their north-south border and the membership of a
commission to organise a referendum on the status of the sensitive Abyei
border area.
Many commentators say southerners, embittered by decades of civil war, are
likely to vote for separation in the referendum, due in January 2011.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the head of the NCP, has promised
to campaign for unity. Most of Sudan's proven oil reserves are in the south.
(Editing by Tim Pearce)
C Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved
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