KHARTOUM - South Sudan's main party said it would form a separate opposition group in the north if the country split in two after a referendum next month, and would seek support from marginalised people, even Darfur rebels. People from Sudan's oil-producing south are widely expected to vote to split away to form Africa's newest nation in a referendum scheduled to take place on Jan. 9 that was promised in a 2005 peace deal ending a civil war between north and south. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), a former southern rebel group, is the ruling party in south Sudan and is overall the country's second-largest party. The SPLM also has supporters in the north, particularly in the border regions of Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains area of Southern Kordofan. US President Barack Obama called South Sudan leader Salva Kiir on Wednesday to discuss the status of peace negotiations and underscore the United States' commitment to a peaceful and on-time referendum, the White House said in a statement. Obama also urged Kiir “to engage seriously” with the ruling party in the North to resolve outstanding issues related to the peace agreement, the White House said. Senior SPLM member Yasir Arman told reporters Wednesday the party's northern sector would become an independent organization in the north as soon as the south became a separate country. “It is going to be a political force to be reckoned with ... The north is a very diverse place. It is a place that needs democratic transformation. It is a place that needs different policies from Khartoum to the different regions of Sudan.” Arman said the party would counter the vision of northern Sudan set out by the country's president Omar Hassan al-Bashir in a speech Sunday. Bashir, the leader of the north's ruling National Congress Party (NCP), told supporters in the eastern city of Gedaref he would bring in an entirely Islamic constitution, that had Arabic as the national language, Islam as the national religion and removed all references to recognising cultural diversity. “If we travel this road, which we have traveled before ... it will incite hatred ...It is not about religion it is about dictatorship,” said Arman, a northerner who was the SPLM's challenger to Bashir in April presidential elections before boycotting the race citing fraud. “There will only be stability and development if there is recognition of diversity and social justice and democracy.” The SPLM governor of Blue Nile state Malik Agar said members of the movements caught up in north Sudan's seven-year Darfur conflict, would be welcome to join. “If they wish to be part of this, they will have to ... renounce their arms. We are for a political means, for a political mechanism.” Arman said the party would initially keep the SPLM name but remain independent from the party in the south. “It will be like the relations between the green parties in Norway and in Britain. They are in different countries but they share the same vision.”
