Salva Kiir was Friday sworn in as Southern Sudan's first elected president following a resounding election victory last month, according to dpa. Kiir, head of the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement, was already running the country. He scooped almost 93 per cent of the vote in Sudan's first multiparty elections in 24 years. Voting in both the north and south was marred by accusations of irregularities and fraud. The elections were part of a process enshrined in the 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between the mainly Muslim north and Christian and Animist south and created the institutions of Souther Sudan. A referendum on independence for the south is set for January.
