KHARTOUM, Mar 27, 2010 (AFP) - The United States and European Union should promote the unity of Sudan rather than prepare for the secession of its south, which would lead to "fanaticism," a prominent opposition leader said Saturday.
"Now we are listening to very senior officials in the United States and in Europe who talk about the peaceful secession of southern Sudan... (but) this is wrong," Mohammed Osman al-Mirghani told AFP.
"This will destroy the peaceful co-existence between the people of Sudan and will lead to extremism and fanaticism," he said in comments translated into English by his assistant.
Sudan is scheduled to hold its first multi-party elections in almost a quarter of a century next month, before staging a referendum on the south's independence in January 2011.
Mirghani, who heads the Democratic Unionist Party, indicated that the West backed the secession of the south.
"I find it very strange that a country like the United States of America, all the states have decided to live together despite their cultural, religious and ethnic diversity, and now people are moving for European Union," he said.
"Why are they asking us to separate the south?" asked the leader of the DUP, which finished second in Sudan's last multi-party polls in 1986, ahead of Islamists who eventually took power in a 1989 coup d'etat.
The United Nations said in February it was up to the people of south Sudan to decide whether or not to opt for independence in the referendum, but said it would try to avert conflict in case of a yes vote.
gl/dv
Copyright AFP 2010.
