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| Africa Horn |
| South Sudan blocks census over ethnicity, religion |
| 2008-04-14 |
| Sudan's south said a census vital to sharing wealth and power with its former northern foe would not take place until questions on ethnicity and religion -- major issues behind decades of civil war -- were included. The semi-autonomous south withdrew from the census on Saturday three days before it was due to begin, saying the north-south border needed to be demarcated and southerners living in the north needed to return home before it began. The northern National Congress Party (NCP) said a delay in the census -- needed to define constituencies -- could push back Sudan's first democratic elections in 23 years due in 2009. But South Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar said the south would not participate without the ethnicity and race questions and his wife, who is also a state minister, said the election could go ahead. "Ethnicity and religion are crucial issues. They address the identity of Sudan," Machar told Reuters. "Our wars are based on (the question:) What is Sudan?" Sudan's national cabinet, including southern and northern ministers, debated the census on Sunday but one source inside the meeting said both sides stuck firm to their positions. "(The cabinet) invited the government of southern Sudan to retract its decision on delaying the population census," Information Minister al-Zahawi Ibrahim Malik told reporters in Khartoum after the meeting. He said any decision on whether the census would go ahead in the north without the south would be taken by the presidency. First Vice President southerner Salva Kiir is to arrive in Khartoum on Monday to have crisis talks with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, one source in the government said. |
| Posted by:Fred |