Yesterday provisional results were announced in the referendum on whether southern Sudan should be allowed to secede from Sudan and become an independent nation. The provisional results indicate that the vote was nearly unanimous in favor of secession, which means, more likely than not, that Southern Sudan will become an independent nation on July 9 of this year.

The current government in Khartoum was quick to make the most of these results and called for the U.S. to lift its sanctions on Sudan, noting that the U.S. had declared the peaceful conduct of the secession referendum as an important priority. The United States, however, declined this invitation noting its lingering concerns about continuing violence in Darfur. Other issues relative to the secession vote also remain to be resolved including the division of oil revenues between the two countries after independence and the ownership of the Abeyi region.

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