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North Sudan party threatens to reject referendum

27 September 2010 19:55 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. North Sudan’s dominant party threatened on Monday to reject the results of a southern independence referendum unless the south withdraws its troops from disputed areas and allows free campaigning in the vote, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
Southerners are just over 100 days away from a vote on whether to stay part of Sudan or declare independence. The plebiscite was promised in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended decades of north-south civil war.
The southern army dismissed the accusations of illicit troop movements and harassment as "baseless."
The prospect of a contested referendum result will dismay analysts who have warned that north and south Sudan could go back to war if the vote is disrupted.
A minister from President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s northern National Congress Party (NCP) accused the south’s army of straying out of areas assigned to them in the peace accord, and said southern authorities were cracking down on supporters of Sudanese unity.
"There is no freedom of (speech) in the south or for any movement to speak out for unity. Many people have been arrested and some of them were even killed," Haj Majid Suwar, Sudan’s youth and sports minister, told reporters.
PEACE AGREEMENT
Asked what the NCP would do if the southerners did not allow open campaigning and move their troops, he said: "At that time, maybe there will be no recognition of the results. We will talk to ... the USA and the U.N. and the AU (African Union) and say that the other side, they didn’t fulfill the CPA, so we may not recognize the results."
He accused the southern army (SPLA) of moving into areas close to the northern states of White Nile and Southern Kordofan. The troop movements and the crackdown on unity supporters threatened the validity of the vote because they broke the terms of the peace agreement and Sudan’s southern referendum act, he added.
The minister said the validity of the referendum also depended on international donors fulfilling promises to fund the referendum and said world powers needed to remain impartial about the outcome of the vote.
The southern army dismissed the accusations, saying all its troops are inside south Sudan and none of its solders have done anything to stop or harass unity campaigners.
"What he is saying is baseless. It is a statement of an occupier who wants to occupy more land," SPLA spokesman Kuol Deim Kuol said.
The NCP has accused the south’s dominant Sudan People’s Liberation Party (SPLM) of campaigning for separation in the vote -- analysts say most southerners want a decisive break from decades of war and will favor independence.
The former rebel SPLM has accused the NCP of trying to disrupt the referendum to keep control of the territory’s oil. Bashir and the NCP say they are campaigning to persuade southerners to choose unity.
Both parties strengthened their hold on their respective halves of the country in April elections. Observers said that vote was marred by widespread irregularities, disorganization and intimidation of minority voices.