Southern Sudan leader Salva Kiir has made his strongest call for full independence when the regions status is decided at a referendum due in one years time, BBC online reports Sunday.
He said voting for unity with northern Sudan would make southerners “second class citizens” in their own land. A referendum in the now semi-autonomous oil-rich south was part of the 2005 deal that ended decades of bloody civil war.
Previously officials have been careful in public to at least promote the unity between north and south, as the peace deal stipulates. Salva Kiir was speaking at a special church service in Juba to pray for peace, timed to mark the start of voter registration for multi-party elections due in April 2010 and the January 2011 referendum.
In October, South Sudan said it had achieved a breakthrough in talks with the north over terms for the referendum.
Vice-President Riek Machar said the vote would require a simple majority as long as two-thirds of those eligible took part. In the past, the Khartoum government had insisted that 75 per cent of voters must agree to independence.
