The people of south Sudan have overwhelmingly voted for independence, which will split Africa's largest country into two and give birth to world's next nation.
The Southern Sudan Referendum Commission said on its website on Friday that 98.6 per cent of the southerners, who took part in the week-long referendum last week, voted in favor of secession.
The Commission said with almost 3.2 million ballots counted so far, about 3.14 million voted for independence.
It was the first official release of the results of the January 9-15 referendum, but the Commission says it is "incomplete and provisional" pending the declaration of preliminary results (to be announced on January 30) and final results (due on February 14).
A statement on the Commission website has also warned that figures published "may be subject to change."
The referendum was one of the consequences of the 2005 Naivasha Agreement between the Khartoum central government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) that ended decades of north-south civil war.
The North-South Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) envisaged resolution of the future of Abyei by holding a referendum on whether to become part of Southern Sudan, and another referendum that recognizes the will of the people in the South.
It decides whether the oil-rich southern region of Abyei, where most people are Christian or follow traditional religions, should secede from the Arab-dominated mostly-Muslim north. But the Abyei referendum has been postponed due to conflict over demarcation and residency rights.
Omar al-Bashir, a Darfur war crimes suspect, was re-elected Sudan's President while former rebel leader Salva Kiir was re-elected President of the semi-autonomous southern region in April last year.
Kiir's Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) joined a fragile national coalition government headed by Bashir's National Congress Party. Bashir has said he will accept people's mandate.
Reports say a vote for independence will throw Southern Sudan, a region rampant with corruption and illiteracy and without any paved roads, into huge challenges.
The vote for independence means the south can control almost 80 per cent of Sudan's immense oil resources, but the port used to ship it abroad is in the north.
National oil exploration companies of Malaysia, India, and China are helping that impoverished country for the third-biggest output in sub-Saharan Africa with a daily production of 490,000 barrels of crude oil.
The United States has offered a number of incentives to Sudan if its leaders choose a path of peace and successfully conduct the referendum, which it terms as "corner stone" of the CPA.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said at a U.N. Security Council meeting in November that it was ready to withdraw Sudan from the black list of state sponsors of terrorism if the government fulfilled the CPA, resolved the future of Abyei by holding the referendum, and then recognized the will of the people in the South.
by RTTNews Staff Writer
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