Referendum on south

Minister of State at the Ministry of External Relations, Gabriel Roric Jur, said there would be a referendum over the status of the south. He told Radio France Internationale, in a broadcast monitored by the BBC on 27 January, that a referendum would improve relations between north and south, whatever the outcome. Unity of the country and a federal system was “a must”, said Jur - but if separation was the result it was important to have good neighbourliness. He said the government had already signed an agreement with a breakaway faction of the southern based Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), then led by Riek Machar from Upper Nile. According to Jur, the agreement included the option of self-detirmination for the south, but there had been no positive response from the mainstream SPLA leader John Garang.

The issue of self-detirmination for the south along with the separation of religion and state remains one of the main stumbling blocks for regionally brokered peace talks between the government and the SPLA, humanitarian sources told IRIN.