Sudan’s oil-rich Abyei remains a thorny issue ahead of vote focus 12/11/2010

Sudan’s oil-rich Abyei remains a thorny issue ahead of vote

focus

12/11/2010

KHARTOUM — Washington has said out loud what everyone else has been whispering — that the self-determination referendum in Sudan’s oil-rich region of Abyei will not take place as planned on Jan. 9.

What people are asking now is what will be the outcome for this strategic region? A negotiated settlement or renewed conflict?

On Tuesday, US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said “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.”

“We continue to press the parties with respect to the situation in Abyei.”

Abyei is on the fault line between north and south Sudan and a referendum is due on whether it remains part with the north or joins an autonomous or independent south, which decides its future in a parallel Jan. 9 vote.

The vote was a central feature of a 2005 peace agreement that put an end to more than two decades of civil war between the north and the south.... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101211com3.html