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By Tesfa-Alem Tekle
January 13, 2011 (ADDIS ABABA) - African Union Peace and Security Council (AU- PSC) urged Sudan’s ruling parties continue to work for the successful completion of the ongoing referendum, to demonstrate commitment to peacefully implement the peace agreement that brought them into coalition government CPA and make progress on post-referendum issues, AU said in a statement.
The week-long referendum is the climax of the 2005 signed Comprehensive Peace agreement (CPA) that ended decades of civil war between north and south Sudan.
The south’s self-determination referendum, which concludes on Saturday, is likely to lead to a creation of a new sovereign state - the first in Africa since Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993.
In the AU-PSC’s 256th meeting on Monday in Addis Ababa, it encouraged the Sudanese parties to continue to extend the necessary cooperation to the AU High Level Implementation Panel on Sudan (AUHIP).
It expressed appreciation to the parties for their commitment to respect the outcome of the referendum and the will of the southern Sudanese people.
It also reiterated the AU’s commitment, as one of the CPA guarantors, to fully respect the result of the referendum, whatever the outcome, and to accompany the parties and the Sudanese people, in general, in the journey that they have embarked upon towards sustainable peace, economic development and democratic transformation.
The Council emphasized that the holding of the referendum was a further testimony to the capacity of the Sudanese parties, with genuine international support, to address the challenges facing their country.
It noted with appreciation the deployment of a sizeable team of electoral observers by the AU and its member states, and called on all the observer missions to effectively monitor the proceedings.
AU-PSC is mandated to prevent, manage and resolve conflicts within the continent.
The wider demand for southerners is to secure a peaceful divorce from the north and form Africa’s newest state.
However, decades of civil war have devastated the territory, which lacks basic infrastructure. Tensions along the north and south’s common border escalated earlier this week raising fears that the two regions could return to civil war.
(ST)
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