SUDAN will hold parliamentary and presidential elections next February, a major step toward implementing a frayed north-south peace deal.
The vote would be the first democratic national election in more than 20 years in Sudan, and is the centrepiece of a 2005 peace deal that ended over two decades of civil war, a conflict that is separate from violence in Darfur.
"The results will
be declared by the end of February. The voting will take place earlier in the month," Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, deputy chairman of Sudan's National Electoral Commission, said.
Abdullah said six elections would be held – for the presidency and parliament, the south Sudanese presidency, state governors, the southern parliament and state assemblies.
Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir is under growing pressure over Darfur, where international experts say that 200,000 people have been killed in almost six years of ethnic and politically driven fighting.
The International Criminal Court last month issued an arrest warrant for Bashir on accusations of war crimes in Darfur, where Khartoum says 10,000 people have died.
Ibrahim Ghandour, a senior official in the dominant National Congress Party, welcomed the commission's decision. "The most positive thing to us is that now the election is in process."
Yien Matthew, spokesman for the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which now runs the government of semi-autonomous south Sudan, said: "The date is OK. The SPLM abides by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and respects the decision of the commission."
The full article contains 257 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
