South Sudan "overwhelmingly" wants independence: minister

By Andrew Heavens

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan's foreign minister said on Tuesday the country's oil-producing south "overwhelmingly" wanted to declare independence in a looming referendum.

Deng Alor, a southerner, also accused the north of fighting a proxy war and destroying hopes of a unified state.

The comments were made at a highly-charged symposium on Sudan's future that analysts said lifted the lid on a growing political rift in Africa's largest state. His statements were dismissed by a leading northerner.

Sudan's mostly Muslim north fought a two-decade civil war with southerners, who largely follow Christianity and traditional beliefs.

A 2005 peace deal created a north/south coalition government and promised the south a vote in 2011 on whether to secede.

Alor told the U.N.-sponsored conference that north Sudan's dominant National Congress Party (NCP) continued to oppress southerners and was arming southern militias behind a recent wave of tribal violence.

NCP presidential advisor Ghazi Salaheddin responded by accusing Alor of paranoia, saying the south had also failed to hold up its part of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

Analysts at the conference said the statements underlined the political distance between the NCP and Alor's former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) just 14 months ahead of the referendum, saying hopes for a southern vote to stay in Sudan were now as good as dead.