20100925
reuters

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Leaders of north and south Sudan vowed to work for peace on Friday as U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders pressured them to hold a referendum on southern independence peacefully and on time.

Vice President Ali Osman Taha of Sudan's national government in Khartoum, and Salva Kiir, president of the semi-autonomous south, joined Obama at a meeting during the U.N. General Assembly.

"What happens in Sudan in the days ahead may decide whether a people who have endured too much war move forward towards peace or slip backwards into bloodshed," Obama said.

"What happens in Sudan matters to all of sub-Saharan Africa, and it matters to the world."

Obama has offered Khartoum the possibility of improved ties with Washington if it works to bring peace to Sudan. At the meeting he warned that failure to do so would bring "consequences -- more pressure and deeper isolation."

In a communique approved at the summit, both sides voiced a commitment to hold a credible vote as scheduled on January 9 next year, following through on a 2005 peace deal ending decades of civil war in Sudan.

"The deal is winding down towards its final and most critical phase, which is the verdict of our people in the south in determining their destiny ... and the whole of Sudan," Taha said in his opening remarks.

But underlying the statements of commitment to a lasting peace were worries that leaders in Khartoum, which is in the north of the country, will be unable -- or unwilling -- to pull off the complex and sensitive vote in which southerners are likely to choose independence.