From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Wed Nov 04 2009 - 10:52:02 EST
South Sudan "overwhelmingly" wants independence: minister
Tue Nov 3, 2009 7:01pm GMT
By Andrew Heavens
KHARTOUM, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Sudan's foreign minister said on Tuesday the
country's oil-producing south "overwhelmingly" wanted to declare
independence in a looming referendum.
Deng Alor, a southerner, also accused the north of fighting a proxy war and
destroying hopes of a unified state.
The comments were made at a highly-charged symposium on Sudan's future that
analysts said lifted the lid on a growing political rift in Africa's largest
state. His statements were dismissed by a leading northerner.
Sudan's mostly Muslim north fought a two-decade civil war with southerners,
who largely follow Christianity and traditional beliefs.
A 2005 peace deal created a north/south coalition government and promised
the south a vote in 2011 on whether to secede.
Alor told the U.N.-sponsored conference that north Sudan's dominant National
Congress Party (NCP) continued to oppress southerners and was arming
southern militias behind a recent wave of tribal violence.
NCP presidential advisor Ghazi Salaheddin responded by accusing Alor of
paranoia, saying the south had also failed to hold up its part of the 2005
Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
Analysts at the conference said the statements underlined the political
distance between the NCP and Alor's former rebel Sudan People's Liberation
Movement (SPLM) just 14 months ahead of the referendum, saying hopes for a
southern vote to stay in Sudan were now as good as dead.
"I don't think their positions can be reconciled," said Sudan expert Alex de
Waal.
"Southerners if asked now ... they will overwhelmingly vote for separation,"
Alor told reporters after the symposium. He said there was still a remote
chance of a unity vote if Khartoum changed its approach and treated the
south as an equal.
"You don't give them services ... and you fight them by proxy. How can these
people vote for unity?" Alor asked the Khartoum audience. "It is sad for
many of us to see our country disintegrate before our eyes."
The north denies arming tribes.
Alor called for a "peaceful divorce" if the south split.
Salaheddin said both sides should honour the promise made in the peace deal
to campaign for unity.
"It is not in the interest of our people whether in northern Sudan or
southern Sudan to be paranoid, to be under the spell of illusions of
persecution, to be despondent to the extent of going for secession," he
said. (Editing by Myra MacDonald)
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