Sudan: U.S. Worried As Southern Region Heads for Secession
Kevin Kelley
8 February 2010
Nairobi — With Southern Sudan now believed virtually certain to vote for independence in less than a year, worries are growing in Washington not only over a possible resumption of the North-South civil war, but also over the likelihood that the newly independent state will not prove viable.
Pessimism appears prevalent both inside and outside the Obama administration.
Officials and advocates alike fear that East Africa's largest country may again be convulsed by violence after a concerted, protracted and ultimately successful US-led effort to end 20 years of disastrous fighting.
Renewed North-South warfare might yet be averted, a panel of 20 Sudan experts suggested in a report published a few months ago, but only if major disagreements are resolved before the southern Sudanese take part in a referendum scheduled for January 2011.
And "absent a change in the status quo," added the report by the nongovernmental US Institute of Peace, "most of the important substantive issues between North and South -- oil revenue sharing, security arrangements and the demarcation of boundaries -- will not be resolved before the referendum."
