Senior State Department officials say they are pleased with the progress of the referendum on southern Sudan's self-determination and praised leaders from both northern and southern Sudan for their cooperation in the process and for the high level of turnout thus far.

Speaking in Washington January 11, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson said the January 9-15, 2011 voting period marks the last major phase of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended two decades of civil war in which an estimated 2 million people died.

"We could now be at the very cusp of seeing the end of one of Africa's longest wars and longest tragedies," Carson said.

The assistant secretary said thus far there have been some disturbances in the Abyei region, but officials in both northern and southern Sudan "should be commended for their collaboration and handling of this monumental, challenging and historical task."

Carson said Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir's visit to the southern city of Juba ahead of the vote was "an act of enormous political courage." Carson welcomed Bashir's remarks that he would recognize the outcome of the referendum and would work with southern Sudan as "a brotherly state" if its people chose to separate from the north.

The assistant secretary attributed the relative absence of violence to the fact that leaders on both sides have separately concluded that "it is in their interests to see that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the referendum in the south go smoothly."

Many in the ruling National Congress Party in Khartoum have come to recognize that the referendum on southern self-determination "was inevitable, essential, and would in fact open a new door for them, as well as for the people of the south," Carson said.

"Critical work" remains to be done to ensure the final implementation of the CPA, including resolving the status of Abyei, citizenship, agreeing on possible boundaries and sharing oil revenues, Carson said. "But the Sudanese government and people of the south have defied all of their skeptics in coming this far," he said.

Speaking with Carson, Ambassador Princeton Lyman, who heads the State Department's Sudan Negotiating Support Unit, said polling places for southerners living in northern Sudan had been well-organized and voters had not encountered security problems or faced pressure on how to vote. In the south, he said, voting has "gone very well," and the mood in both regions "has been very positive."

Lyman said the United States has told the government in Khartoum that on completion of the referendum and the acceptance of its results, the Obama administration will begin the process of examining Sudan's removal from its list of terrorism sponsors.
The potential removal "involves certain reviews and certain consultations with Congress," he said.

Finalizing the removal and other steps toward normalized relations with the United States "would all come, we expect, around July, as the other elements of the CPA are fully achieved," such as an agreement on Abyei and other issues, Lyman said.

Carson said Sudan has enough time between now and July to comply with the criteria under the U.S. law that would remove the terrorism designation because the law stipulates that a government cannot have provided support to a terrorist group within the previous six months.

The assistant secretary said the United States remains committed to doing as much as it can to ensure full implementation of the CPA, and that the results of the process will lead to "an outcome in which the Sudanese people can prosper peacefully under a single [state] or under two separate states."

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)