By AFP
WASHINGTON: The self-determination referendum on Sudan’s oil-rich Abyei region will not take place as planned on Jan. 9, US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said Tuesday.
The Abyei referendum was set to coincide with a parallel referendum in southern Sudan where the people there decide whether to stay within an autonomous part of a united Sudan or form their own state in the south.
“We continue to press the parties with respect to the situation in Abyei,” Crowley told reporters.
“I think we have a recognition that that referendum will not go forward on Jan. 9, but we continue to encourage the parties to work on a solution to Abyei,” Crowley told reporters.
The United States, Britain and Norway last week welcomed how voter registration was proceeding for the Jan. 9 referendum on southern Sudan’s independence, but raised concerns about the vote in Abyei.
Tensions are so high regarding the votes that could see the mainly Christian and animist south secede from Sudan, dominated by Arab Muslims in the north, that there are fears the civil war that ended five years ago could be reignited.
The three countries are working to encourage both the south and north to follow through on the terms of a 2005 peace agreement that ended Sudan’s two-decade civil war, Africa’s longest such conflict.
