WASHINGTON: Scott Gration, the US envoy to Sudan, warned Wednesday that there is no more time to waste in preparations for a January referendum planned for southern Sudan under a fragile peace pact.
"I think it’s possible to get done everything we have to get done, but we can’t waste another minute. The time is now," Gration told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"We are," Gration said when the committee chairman, Senator John Kerry, asked him whether people were behind in preparations for a referendum that could lead to the secession of southern Sudan.
Gration said last month’s elections — Sudan’s first multi-party polls since 1986 that saw president Omar Al-Beshir extend his term in office — were an important first step despite doubts over the credibility of the results.
"We have to take the lessons from the elections and turn them into solutions for the referendum," Gration said.
"There has to be better voter education. There has to be a better system of logistics and procedures, administration," he added.
"The referendum commission has to be appointed by the (Sudanese) national assembly, they have to be financed, and they have to be given the training," he said.
Gration said he was especially concerned about registering exiled voters, saying many of them were unable to produce birth certificates needed to show they are from the south.
The registration process, he said, begins July 9 in 14 different nations.
The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended two decades of war in Sudan by offering southern Sudan a measure of autonomy until the future of the country is determined in a referendum set for January 2011.
