KHARTOUM: A vote due in January on the future of the contested Sudanese oil district Abyei cannot be held on time, a senior Khartoum official said on Thursday, drawing a threat from the district's administrator to go ahead unilaterally. The vote on whether Abyei should remain in the north or join the south had been scheduled to take place at the same time as a referendum on independence for the south on January 9. The two ballots are the centrepiece of a 2005 peace deal between the Khartoum government and southern rebels that put an end to Africa's longest running civil war but negotiations between the two sides on should be eligible to take part in the Abyei vote broke down in Ethiopia on Tuesday. “We have reached agreement that it is not possible to hold the vote in Abyei on January 9,” said Al-Dirdiri Mohammed Ahmed, who is the chief negotiator on the district for the National Congress Party of President Omar al-Bashir. “The vote will run into a number of problems if it goes ahead on that date,” Ahmed told a news conference. Abyei chief administrator Deng Arop Kuol described the threatened delay as “unacceptable” and warned that residents could take matters into their own hands. “It cannot be delayed. It has to be held on time,” Kuol said. “Nobody in Abyei will accept that; it's unacceptable,” he added. “The people in Abyei will have some options, like organising their own referendum and invite the international community to monitor it,” he warned. Abyei is split between Misseriya Arabs who are seen as in favour of remaining part of Sudan and Ngok Dinka who are seen as supportive of joining an independent south. The district's referendum law gives voting rights to the Dinka, leaving it up to a referendum commission to decide which “other Sudanese” are considered residents of the region and can also vote. The law has angered the Misseriya -- a tribe that migrates each year to Abyei looking for pasture for their cattle -- and they have threatened to carry out acts of violence in the district if they are not allowed to vote. The two sides agreed on Tuesday to resume negotiations at the end of this month. “The parties continue to commit themselves to their mutual goal of avoiding a return to conflict,” said a joint statement issued after the breakdown of the talks in Ethiopia. A postponement of the Abyei referendum will add to tensions between Khartoum and the autonomous south, whose president Salva Kiir said on Wednesday that the agreement on Abyei should be implemented. “We do not want Abyei to become a potential trigger for a conflict again between the south and the north,” he said. The district's future has long been a major bone of contention between north and south because of its oil wealth. Tensions between the two sides had already been on the rise as the clock ticks down to the wider referendum on independence for the south. The Sudanese military has accused southern troops of crossing the north-south border and warned that the “violation” threatens preparations for the vote. Kiir last week asked the United Nations to send peacekeepers to patrol disputed border points in the referendum run-up. A British diplomat with a UN Security Council delegation that visited Sudan last week told reporters Kiir warned that the south could hold its own independence referendum if there was “a huge delay” in the government's preparations for the vote. – Agence France
