Juba: South Sudan became the world’s newest country and Africa’s 54th state here early on Saturday.
Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon were among the international dignitaries attending the celebrations in the capital, Juba, BBC reported.
The birth of the world’s newest nation followed a process made possible by the 2005 peace deal that ended a long and bloody civil war.
A referendum, under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, was held on independence, which was favoured by more than 99 percent of voters.
The new country is rich in oil, but one of the least developed countries in the world, where one-in-seven children dies before the age of five.
The south’s independence followed decades of conflict with the north, in which some 1.5 million people died.
Years of war have flooded South Sudan with weapons.
In a possible sign of the South’s new allegiances, the crowd included about 200 supporters of Darfur rebel leader Abdel Wahed al-Nur, whose forces are fighting Khartoum in an eight-year insurgency just over South Sudan’s border in the north.
The supporters of Nur’s rebel Sudan Liberation Army faction stood in a line chanting ”Welcome, welcome new state”, wearing T-shirts bearing their leader’s image. One carried a banner reading ”El Bashir is wanted dead or alive”.
Traditional dance groups drummed and waved shields and staffs in a carnival atmosphere.
”I am very pleased,” said Joma Cirilow, 47, his hand on his son’s shoulder. ”Do you want to be a second class citizen? No, I want to be a first class citizen in my own country.”
Christian priests in full robes blessed the ceremony site in central Juba where a large statue stood draped in a flag near the mausoleum of the south’s civil war hero John Garang.
”Today we raise the flag of South Sudan to join the nations of the world. A day of victory and celebration,” Pagan Amum, the secretary general of the South’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) told Reuters.
”Free at last,” said Simon Agany, 34, as he walked around shaking hands. ”Coming away from the north is total freedom.”
North Sudan’s Khartoum government was the first to recognise the new state on Friday, hours before the formal split took place, a move that smoothed the way to the division of what was, until today, Africa’s largest country.
The recognition did not dispel fears of future tensions.
Northern and southern leaders have still not agreed on a list of issues, most importantly the line of the border and how they will handle oil revenues, the lifeblood of both economies.
At the stroke of midnight the Republic of Sudan lost around three quarters of its oil reserves, which are sited in the south, and faced the future with insurgencies in its Darfur and Southern Kordofan regions. (PTI)