20100402
ALALAM

Sudan's main opposition parties have announced a total boycott of presidential, legislative and regional elections.

The groupings comprises of Umma Party's Mariam al-Mahdi, the communist party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), all of which earlier announced a boycott of the presidential election which looks set to return Omar al-Beshir to power.

Officials said each party would now hold an internal meeting to validate the boycott decision.

Thursday's developments came a day after Beshir's main challenger Yasser Arman, candidate (SPLM), announced he was withdrawing from the presidential race.

Umma and the DUP came first and second respectively in the last multi-party election in 1986.

Three opposition parties, including that of Hassan al-Turabi, have not withdrawn from the elections.

Once a mentor to Beshir and now one of his critics, Turabi said he would still run.

"Our party will engage in the presidential (election)... at all levels," he said after meeting Gration.

Gration, who arrived on Wednesday, earlier met separately with Umma members, Turabi and DUP head Mohammed Osman al-Mirghani in marathon talks on the elections and the fate of the war-torn region of Darfur in western Sudan.

Fatima Abdelmahmud, the first ever female presidential candidate, has not decided her position yet.

Under a 2005 agreement that ended a 22-year north-south civil war, mostly Christian and animist southern Sudan obtained the right to hold a referendum in January 2011 on whether to break away from the Muslim-majority north.

Beshir has made it clear, however, that unless the SPLM participates in the elections, the referendum -- which the southerners believe will deliver their independence -- will not go ahead.