20100816
reuters

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - The head of a commission to plan south Sudan's looming vote on independence said north- south divisions within the body were undermining preparations and threatened to resign if the deadlock continued.

Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil said the January 9 vote which many analysts believe will create the world's newest nation should be a national process. He criticised five southerners in the nine-member referendum commission for excluding northerners from taking a key post.

"If things continue like this I will just excuse myself that's all," Khalil told Reuters in an interview on Sunday.

The divisions have left referendum arrangements at a standstill with no schedule to begin complex voter registration which, according to the law, should have already been completed.

Khalil said the five southerners were voting as a block to prevent any northerner taking the key post of secretary-general, a principle he said he could not accept.

The secretary-general controls the funds and budget of the commission and south Sudan's ruling party has warned the deadlock could derail the vote -- the climax of a 2005 landmark north-south peace deal which ended Africa's longest civil war.

"This (commission) can only work if we can get people to be cooperative, to have mutual trust ... and to approach things objectively from a national point, not from the point of view of north and south," the lawyer and former foreign minister said.

"With things as they are, all resolutions would be a foregone conclusion," he said. "The five (southern) members are determined to vote as a block -- to me this is just not acceptable, it makes a nonsense of the whole process."