ALALAM

Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir has again said his country's elections will be held as planned on April 11-13, rejecting opposition calls for a postponement.

“Ahead of us, the days are numbered,” Bashir told a campaign rally in Kassala, in eastern Sudan in a speech broadcast by Sudan's Blue Nile television channel. “There is no postponement, there is no delay and there is no cancellation.”

Bashir spoke a day after the opposition Umma Party said US Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration would try to persuade the Sudanese government to delay the vote.

The party threatened it would boycott the elections April 6 if voting isn't moved back by four weeks.

Sarah Nugdallah, head of Umma's political bureau, said yesterday Gration “will try to achieve this delay” and that Gration asked the party to participate in the elections.

Gration said on Saturday he was reassured by the National Elections Commission that the vote will be held on time and will be free and fair.

The vote for the presidency, parliament and state governorships will take place five years after a peace agreement ended a two-decade long war that killed as many as 2 million people between the north and the south, where Christianity and traditional religion dominate.

Islamist Popular Congress Party leader Hassan al-Turabi, who helped Bashir seize power in a 1989 coup, said April 1 that his party would participate in the election.

The Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which governs the semi-autonomous region of Southern Sudan, announced on March 31 it was withdrawing its presidential candidate from the vote and boycotting the polls in the western region of Darfur. It will contest the election in the rest of the country.

Southern Sudan is scheduled to vote in a referendum in January to decide whether to secede from the rest of Sudan.