- KHARTOUM: A senior north Sudanese official said the south's independence referendum was largely fair and his party would accept the likely vote for secession — the most conciliatory gesture to date from Khartoum.
The comments from a leading member of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) will allay initial concerns that the north might try to disrupt the vote in an effort to keep control of the south's oil reserves.
It may also reduce the risk of a relapse into general north-south conflict after the referendum. Northern and southern leaders remain at odds over some sensitive issues including how to share out oil revenues after a split and the ownership of the Abyei region, where clashes re-erupted as the vote began.
On Friday, southerners started their penultimate day of voting in the week-long referendum on whether to declare independence, a plebiscite that is widely expected to see the underdeveloped region emerge as a new nation.
"We are satisfied with the process and, as it has been declared by the President (Omar) Al-Bashir, we will respect the outcome of the referendum ... It will most likely be for secession," the NCP's Ibrahim Ghandour told Reuters in an interview on Friday.
The poll caps a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of north-south conflict. It was Africa's longest civil war and killed an estimated 2 million people, forced 4 million to flee and destabilized the region.
Ghandour, the NCP's secretary for political relations, said the vote was "broadly fair", despite some reports of supporters of Sudanese unity being intimidated in remote areas of south Sudan's Bahr El-Ghazal states.
"I think until now the process is going smoothly. The most important thing is that it is going very, very peacefully ... I think it will meet with the standards required," he said."We still wait to see the final report of our observers as well as international observers."
He added: "If secession occurs we are ready to support a new state and we look forward to brotherly relations with our ex-citizens."
Bashir, who is also leader of the NCP, has promised in the past to accept the result, on condition that the vote was free and fair — a stipulation that led some analysts to think the north might be setting the ground for a legal challenge.
