South Sudan's president Salva Kiir reappointed his deputy, state media said on Saturday, in his first step to forming a new government to take the underdeveloped region to a 2011 independence referendum, Reuters reported. Sudan's oil-producing south secured its own semi-autonomous government, and the referendum on whether it should split off as a separate country, in a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of civil war with the north. Kiir, who won an overwhelming April election victory to stay in power as president of south Sudan, issued a decree reappointing Riek Machar as the region's vice president, the state Suna news agency reported. Kiir is expected to name the rest of his new cabinet in the next few days, with seven months left before the plebiscite, due in January 2011. -- SPA
