S.Sudan leader warns of violence if vote delayed

By Andrew Quinn

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sudan risks "violence on a massive scale" if there is any delay to a planned January referendums that will likely split the oil-rich African nation in two, South Sudan's leader said on Friday.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir said it increasingly appeared that "unity is not an option" following the January 9 vote, which will cap a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war in the country.

"At the moment all signs point to the fact that on January 9, 2011 Southern Sudanese people will vote overwhelmingly for their own independence," Kiir told an audience in Washington.

"There is without question a real risk of a return to violence on a massive scale if the referenda do not go ahead as scheduled," he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama will join other world leaders at a U.N. summit on Sudan next week in a sign of mounting concern that the January vote could reopen a 20-year conflict responsible for 2 million deaths, mostly from hunger and disease.

The United States has intensified its diplomatic engagement with both sides, and this week offered South Sudan and the northern government in Khartoum a new package of incentives to reach a deal, balanced by the threat of new punitive measures including sanctions if progress stalls.

Kiir said his government was working out final details on issues including borders and citizenship, as well as to find a mutually acceptable formula on how North and South Sudan will split the country's oil revenues.

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