Sudan Referendum Body Agrees Post To End Deadlock

Sudan’s referendum commission agreed on a key post on Thursday, ending a deadlock which has stalled plans for the Jan. 9 southern vote on independence from the north against which it has fought decades of civil war.

The plebiscite is the climax of a 2005 north-south peace deal which ended Africa’s longest civil war.

But bickering over implementing the deal has fuelled mistrust and most analysts believe the south, where most of Sudan’s 6 billion proven oil reserves lie, will secede.

Last month, south Sudan’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement said it would accept a northerner to take the post of secretary-general, ending a row that had paralysed the nine-member commission’s work. The secretary-general is pivotal and controls the funds.

"We agreed – we had only one person that was brought this morning and we agreed that he should be the secretary-general," commission member Lual Chany told Reuters. Mohamed Osman al-Nujoomi had previously worked in the finance ministry, he said. The president would appoint al-Nujoomi to the post.

But the SPLM on Thursday accused the northern ruling National Congress Party (NCP) of trying to derail the Jan. 9 deadline for the emotive vote. Observers say a delay could spark violent protests by southerners throughout Sudan.

"The NCP they have no political will to take decisions – they are buying time…with committee after committee," said senior SPLM official Yasir Arman. "The end game is for the referendum not to take place on time," he said.

At least four committees are tackling sensitive post-referendum issues including the division of oil wealth and defining citizenship but little progress has been made.

The two party leaders President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and First Vice President Salva Kiir have failed to agree on the disputed north-south border or oil-producing Abyei region.

"The meetings of the presidency and of the committee they were not fruitful," Arman said.

Arman said the NCP was funding the settlement of nomadic Arab Missiriya tribesmen in the north in the Abyei region to change the demographic ahead of any vote and urged the U.N. peacekeeping mission (UNMIS) to investigate.

UNMIS was not immediately available to comment.

Some 2 million people died in the civil war in which the mostly Christian and animist SPLM rebels fought the Islamist Khartoum government over ethnicity, ideology and oil.

(Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)