UNITED NATIONS/KHARTOUM - The United States is worried about the flow of arms into semi-autonomous southern Sudan, some of it heavy weapons, ahead of a nationwide April election, the US envoy to the United Nations said on Wednesday. "We heard today from the UN that it is not just small arms but some heavier munitions that seem to be flowing in," US Ambassador Susan Rice told reporters after a UN Security Council meeting on Sudan. "We weren't given specifics on that," she said. "But we have seen, in the violence that is taking place in the South, a higher degree of sophistication and lethality of the weapons employed, and that's a source of concern." She added that Washington believed some of the weapons were coming from northern Sudan. "But I imagine that weapons are also coming from elsewhere and we would like a full accounting," Rice said, adding that it was a region with "porous borders" and that weapons were coming from "all directions." Human Rights Watch warned on Sunday that repression of political opponents in both Sudan's North and semi-autonomous South was undermining the prospects for Sudan's first democratic elections in 24 years, scheduled for April. After decades of north-south civil war, a 2005 peace deal shared power and wealth and enshrined democratic reform in Africa's largest country. It outlined the April elections and a southern Sudanese referendum on independence in 2011. Meanwhile, former Sudanese prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi has announced he will stand against current leader Omar al-Bashir in a forthcoming presidential election. Mahdi was elected in Sudan's last multi-party vote in 1986, but was overthrown by Bashir in a 1989 coup. BBC reporter James Copnall, in Khartoum, said Mahdi's presence gives real legitimacy to April's election. The polls are part of a 2005 peace deal that ended a two-decade civil war between north and south Sudan. Some of the other major figures in Sudanese politics, such as southern leader and national Vice-President Salva Kiir and Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi, have opted not to challenge President Bashir. The parties of both men are instead fielding less well known candidates in the presidential election. Kiir is standing for re-election as the south's leader, ahead of a referendum on whether the region should seek independence from the rest of Sudan, due in 2011.
