Southerners to be foreign in north Sudan: Bashir

KHARTOUM, January 7, 2011

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir said in a television interview on Friday that southern Sudanese would be considered foreigners with certain benefits if the south votes for independence.

"Since they have decided, or will decide, that Sudan will be divided into two states, and that they will establish a state for themselves in southern Sudan, there is no logic that says they must have the same rights and benefits in north Sudan," he said in a live interview on Al-Jazeera.

"They say 'we are marginalised, second-class citizens.' Well, to not be marginalised, don't take the nationality of the country that marginalises you."

On the question of whether southerners would be considered to be foreigners but with certain benefits, Bashir simply said "yes" without elaborating.

The south Sudan vote in a referendum on independence that begins on Sunday is a key plank of the 2005 peace accord that ended a decades-long civil war between north and south, and could see Africa's largest nation split in two.

Bashir said 20 percent of jobs in the public sector -- both military, security and civilian -- were currently occupied by southerners.

"How can southern Sudanese take 20 percent of the jobs (in the north) if this is an exclusive right of northerners?" he asked in the interview.

Asked whether such southerners would be laid off, Bashir said: "Of course, if the south splits," while at the same maintaining that their rights would be respected.

According to the latest census, in 2008, there are some 500,000 southerners in north Sudan, but the autonomous southern regional government and aid groups estimate the southern population in the north to be at least 1.5 million.